café, noun

/ˈkæfeɪ//ˈkæfi/
Forms:
Also cafe, caffie.
Origin:
English, South African EnglishShow more Special sense of general English café ‘a tea-shop or coffee house’, a sense formerly current in South African English, but now usually replaced by coffee-shop.
A shop selling sweets, cigarettes, newspapers, perishables, and basic groceries, and staying open after normal hours; Greek; kafee; tearoom sense 1. Also attributive.
1957 B. O’Keefe Gold without Glitter 79Number Twelve set off on the sixteen mile journey..with as little concern as the city dweller when he strolls down to the corner café to buy a packet of cigarettes.
1969 M. Benson At Still Point 188‘Last Wednesday evening,’ he said, ‘on your way to dinner.., you stopped at a café to buy sweets.’
1974 Sunday Times 3 Nov. (Mag. Sect.) 3The local cafe is the same throughout South Africa — a cluster of canned foods, sweets, cigarettes, cold drinks.
1975 Sunday Times 9 Mar. (Mag. Sect.) 10The cafe-owners’ complaint that half-cents are hard to come by is partially valid in that there has been a shortage.
1978 Staffrider Vol.1 No.4, 10Forlorn junction dorps..where caffies have deep-fried burgers.
1986 S. Sepamla Third Generation 73Ya, just a dorpie with one street: cafe, groceries,..bottle-store, garage, bakery and the police station just behind the main street.
1989 T. Botha in Style June 108A love story about the long open road, putting foot, fly-bitten caffies, ver verlate vlaktes as well as the art of sleepdriving at 120km/h.
1991 C. Barrett in Weekend Post 12 Jan. 8As the years marched on, the corner grocer evolved in[to] a café or general dealer.
A shop selling sweets, cigarettes, newspapers, perishables, and basic groceries, and staying open after normal hours; Greek; kafee; tearoom sense 1. Also attributive.
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cadenza, nounn.cafe-bio, nounn.
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