café au lait en · NOUN
Pronunciation
Etymology
Unadapted borrowing from French café au lait (literally “coffee with milk”).
Meanings
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(countable, uncountable) A mixture of coffee and hot milk.
It was like using a language I'd once known but had nearly forgotten, a language having to do with customs that had long before passed out of the world: café au lait at an outdoor table, with a brioche, absinthe in a tall glass, or shrimp in a cornucopia of newspaper; things I'd once read about but had never seen.
1985, Margaret Atwood, “Soul Scrolls”, in The Handmaid’s Tale, Toronto, Ont.: McClelland and Stewart, →ISBN, page 164:
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(countable, uncountable) Coffee and hot milk served in separate jugs as a breakfast drink.
By my side was the empty bowl in which the concierge had brought me my café au lait and the fragment of croissant which I had not had appetite enough to eat. I heard the concierge in the next room emptying my bath.
1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter XXXIV, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC, page 175:
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(countable, uncountable) A light coffee colour.
Seen all of a piece like this, in a picture that fits snugly into the lens of any camera, Kersey is a peaceful, multi-coloured Toytown of a village, whose red-tiled roofs are subdued by just the right amount of weathering and lichen, and whose overhanging gables thrust forward in a quiet brilliance of red-and-yellow ochre, pink, white and café-au-lait.
1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 240:
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| cafe au lait | alternative | lexicographic | |
| café au laits | Number=Plur | lexicographic | |
| coffee au lait | alternative | lexicographic | |
| cafés au lait | Number=Plur | lexicographic |
Coordinates
café noir · caffè latte · latte
Deriveds
café au lait spot · café au lait birthmark · café au lait macule
Relateds
Translations (21)
fi café au lait (coffee with milk) · de Milchkaffee (coffee with milk) · th กาเฟโอแล (coffee with milk) · ja カフェオレ (coffee with milk) · eo laktokafo (coffee with milk) · ca cafè amb llet (coffee with milk) · pl café au lait (coffee with milk) · nl koffie verkeerd (coffee with milk) · it caffè latte (coffee with milk) · fi ranskalainen maitokahvi (coffee with milk) · tr sütlü kahve (coffee with milk) · fr café au lait (colour) · ko 카페오레 (coffee with milk) · fi maitokahvi (colour) · he קָפֶה הָפוּךְ (coffee with milk) · ms kopi susu (coffee with milk) · pl biała kawa (coffee with milk) · it caffè e latte (coffee with milk) · pt café com leite (coffee with milk) · es café con leche (coffee with milk) · fr café au lait (coffee with milk)