coffee and...

[Joan Houston Hall]

"Coffee and" is an old slang term.  DARE has "1901 in 1954 Weingarten
_Amer. Dict. Slang_" as the first citation.  See also "and" conj B5 for
similar phrases.

At 01:13 PM 8/15/2000 +0100, you wrote:
>>From "Doing the Frango" by Andrea Cooper in today's Salon.com:
>
>[context:  shopping for school clothes at Marshall Field's]
>When the pile of discards had grown as colorful and layered as a trifle,
>Gramma was finally ready to pause. "Oh, honey, I'm exhausted," she
>confessed. "Let's stop for 'coffee and.'" She meant milk and a snack for
>me, coffee and a cigarette for her. (It took years before I realized the
>expression "coffee and" is unique to Chicago.)
>
>
>I've not heard the phrase 'coffee and', but I've only lived downstate in
>Illinois.  Is this well-attributed?
>
>The article's a nice bit of familiarity for those who've shopped at
>Field's and gorged on Frango mints.
>
>Lynne, a distant relative (by marriage) to Marshall Field
>
>
>Dr M Lynne Murphy
>Lecturer in Linguistics
>School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
>University of Sussex
>Brighton BN1 9QH
>UK
>
>phone +44-(0)1273-678844
>fax   +44-(0)1273-671320
>