Dictionary

cuppa en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ˈkʌp.ə/
• (Australia) audio

Etymology

Contraction of cup of (with “tea” or sometimes “coffee” implied). See also a (“of”), pinta (“pint of milk”).

Meanings

1. (Australia, Ireland, New-Zealand, UK, colloquial) A cup of tea (or sometimes any hot drink).
   • ‘Here,’ said Clancy as he sat up and dangled his legs over the edge of the bed, ‘You sit down and take it easy. I′ll boil the billy for a cuppa’. 2007, Kevin Hallewell, Woop Woop, page 35:
   • […] we covered the hundred yards to the lawn where the tea table awaited us. […] Only Bobbie was present when we arrived at the trough. Wilbert and Phyllis were presumably still in the leafy glade, and Mrs Cream, Bobbie said, worked in her room every afternoon on her new spine-freezer and seldom knocked off for a cuppa. 1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, chapter III:
   • I’ve just put the kettle on – fancy a cuppa?
   • 2017 Mrs. S. "Guillotines Decide" Orphan Black Get Kira up. I'll pour you a cuppa.
   • 1992, Machine Knitting Monthly, Maidenhead: Machine Knitting Monthly Ltd., Back home safely, I made a cuppa and sat for a good hour revelling in my favourite magazine.
2. (Australia, Ireland, New-Zealand, UK, colloquial) Whatever interests or suits one; one's cup of tea.
   • Similes were not my cuppa, anyway. My classmates tended to overload their writing with them (all-time record: six in one paragraph) and they stuck out like violins in a rock tune. 2001, Gabrielle Bauer, Waltzing the Tango: Confessions of an Out-of-step Boomer, page 210:
3. (alt-of, pronunciation-spelling) Pronunciation spelling of cup of.
   alt of cup of
   • “That′s a new line, isn′t it? Come up to my suite for a cuppa coffee.” 2008, Frank Deford, The Entitled: A Tale of Modern Baseball, page 204:
   • I just felt like I wanted another cuppa coffee and I told her so;[…]and before I could get just one more cuppa coffee it was seven-fifty! 1915, Sinclair Lewis, edited by Anthony Di Renzo, Commutation: $9.17: If I Were Boss: The Early Business Stories of Sinclair Lewis, published 1997:
   • And he orders a cuppa cawfee. “A cuppa cawfee and what else?” I says to him. 1940, The New Yorker, Volume 16, Part 1, page 22:

Forms

Deriveds

cuppa joe