Coffeehouse

2 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Coffeehouse \Cof"fee*house`\ (k[add]"f[-e]*hous`), n.
     A house of entertainment, where guests are supplied with
     coffee and other refreshments, and where men meet for
     conversation.
     [1913 Webster]
  


           The coffeehouse must not be dismissed with a cursory
           mention. It might indeed, at that time, have been not
           improperly called a most important political
           institution. . . . The coffeehouses were the chief
           organs through which the public opinion of the
           metropolis vented itself. . . . Every man of the upper
           or middle class went daily to his coffeehouse to learn
           the news and discuss it. Every coffeehouse had one or
           more orators, to whose eloquence the crowd listened
           with admiration, and who soon became what the
           journalists of our own time have been called -- a
           fourth estate of the realm.              --Macaulay.
     [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  coffeehouse
       n : a small restaurant where drinks and snacks are sold [syn: {cafe},
            {coffee shop}, {coffee bar}]