Poor man's latte / ghetto latte

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Dec 4, 2007 2:45 PM, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
> On Dec 4, 2007 2:13 PM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> >
> > The earliest Webcite I can find for "poor man's latte" is Mar 13, 2006
> > (http://dc.metblogs.com/archives/2006/03/costco_the_land_1.phtml) by
> > narni therese: "my favorite is the "poor man's latte" where a customer
> > makes their own iced latte using milk from the condiment bar."
> >
> > The next hit I see is Aug 14 2006
> > (http://starbucksgossip.typepad.com/_/2006/08/a_seemingly_min.html) by
> > CuteBarista!: "(we have at least one person per morning that comes up to
> > the counter and demands a free cup of coffee, not to mention the poor
> > man's latte folks, etc), we would be losing serious money."
> >
> > Around September 2006, both "ghetto latte" and "poor man's latte" seem
> > to have hit currency in the press, though the comment from CuteBarista!
> > indicates the word was commonly known by then. Probably some earlier
> > hits for people with access to newspaper archives.
>
> Some earlier discussion of "ghetto latte" on the Usenet newsgroup
> alt.coffee from Jan. 2006 (in a thread featuring our own Alice Faber):
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/alt.coffee/browse_frm/thread/9018dd901f8a70fb/f7909ae26e5b24e5
>
> Another term in use is "bootleg latte".

Grant Barrett already got to this, of course....

http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/dictionary/ghetto_latte/
(cites back to July 2005)


--Ben Zimmer

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