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Word for Wednesday: Americano

Our Word for Wednesday theme for June is coffee.  Coffee is made by roasting and grinding coffee beans and creating an infusion. The word coffee entered English around 1600 via the Dutch ‘koffie’, which comes from the Turkish ‘kahveh', from the Arabic ‘qahwah’. So far we’ve looked at the words espresso,  cappuccino, macchiato, and latte. Our final word of the month is Americano.  An Americano is made by adding hot water to espresso, and the word is simply Italian for ‘American coffee’. One popular theory behind the origin of the Americano ...

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June Round-Up 2021

Work your way from a Spelling Newbie to a Spelling Grandmaster by earning achievement points!  New Student Titles are now live on Spellzone. Click here to learn how many points you need for each level.  If you are a teacher, you can find out a student’s current level by clicking on the star on their profile picture. We have also added Student Titles to the results overview spreadsheet. You can download this at the bottom of your student roll and class pages.   We have recently added a bank of Tier 2 words to our Curriculum Word Lists page.  Tier 2 words are less common than high frequency words (Tier 1) and are often integral to the compre...

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Word for Wednesday: Latte

Our Word for Wednesday theme for June is coffee.  Coffee is made by roasting and grinding coffee beans and creating an infusion. The word coffee entered English around 1600 via the Dutch ‘koffie’, which comes from the Turkish ‘kahveh', from the Arabic ‘qahwah’. So far we’ve looked at the words espresso,  cappuccino, and macchiato. Today’s word is latte. Latte literally means ‘milk coffee’ and refers to an espresso served with hot milk. The word comes from the Latin ‘lac’ meaning ‘milk’. ...

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Word for Wednesday: Macchiato

Our Word for Wednesday theme for June is coffee.  Coffee is made by roasting and grinding coffee beans and creating an infusion. The word coffee entered English around 1600 via the Dutch ‘koffie’, which comes from the Turkish ‘kahveh', from the Arabic ‘qahwah’. So far we’ve looked at the words espresso and cappuccino. Today’s word is macchiato.   A macchiato is an espresso with a small amount of milk added to it. In Italian, the word means ‘stained’ or ‘spotted’ and it was first used in reference to coffee when baristas needed to differentiate between esp...

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Coffee Stories

Many of us can’t get through the day without our caffeine fix, but how many of know the origins behind our coffee words? Today we’re going to take a look at five different types of coffee beverage and how they got their names.  To learn more about the origin of the word ‘coffee’ itself, click here. Espresso Espresso is made by forcing steam through finely ground coffee beans. The word comes from the Latin ‘exprimere’ meaning ‘press out, squeeze out’. The rest of the coffees explored in this blog post are made using espresso as a base. Macchiato A macchiato is an espresso with a small amount of milk added to it. In Italian, the...

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