coffee shop

noun

A small café or restaurant typically selling light refreshments along with coffee-based drinks.

“He went to the nearby coffee shop with his friends.”

Meanings

nouncoffee shop (plural coffee shops)

plural coffee shops · alternative coffee-shop · alternative coffeeshop

  1. A small café or restaurant typically selling light refreshments along with coffee-based drinks.

    He went to the nearby coffee shop with his friends.

    2 more examples

    "From behind the counter of this provincial train station coffee shop, Joanna was barista and unofficial shrink to wildly varied London-bound travellers," writes author Laline Paull. Confessions of a Barista on Platform 1 was published on February 9 by The Firle Press [...].

    2021 March 10, “Stop & Examine”, in RAIL, number 926, page 70

    Since the early 2010s, when the first wave of niche coffee shops opened in France, their number has risen 74 percent across the country to 3,500, with a new coffeehouse now opening every week, according to Collectif Café, a trade association. […] This morning stop is for good company, but for good caffeine, Ms. Bantman then picks up a €3 cortado or piccolo, to go, from her regular coffee shop before heading to the office. […] Over time, the concern is that the cafe’s role as the heart of Parisian society will become obsolete, Mr. Fontaine said, as the younger generation turns to the coffee shop.

    2025 January 21, Vivian Song, “Specialty Coffee Shops and Parisian Cafes”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 25 Jan 2025

    Synonyms: café, coffeehouse, diner

  2. A café-like establishment selling marijuana in the Netherlands.
  3. MalaysiaSingaporeSynonym of kopitiam (“traditional eatery”).

    Synonyms: kopitiam

  4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see coffee, shop.

Synonyms & antonyms

nounA small café or restaurant typically selling light refreshments along with coffee-based drinks.

nounSynonym of kopitiam (“traditional eatery”).

Similar

More synonyms by meaning

nouna small restaurant where drinks and snacks are sold

Broader

Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.

Origin

  1. Dutchcoffeeshop
  2. Englishcoffee shop

From coffee + shop. Sense 2 is from Dutch coffeeshop, a pseudo-anglicism of this term.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

coffee shop. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/coffee%20shop

MLA

“coffee shop.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/coffee%20shop. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “coffee shop,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/coffee%20shop.

Source: coffee shop on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.