A cup of "JOE"
One of our favorite bits of slang around the Gano Excel offices is “a cup of joe,” meaning (in our case) a piping hot mug of one of our perfectly-brewed Café 2.0 products. But much as we use the expression, nobody could quite figure where it came from. So, we did some research…and it just confused us more!
OK, picture this. It’s an early morning in the 1800s, and we’re on the deck of great British naval ship. The sailors are clamoring around an earthenware jar marked, weirdly, “SRD.” Whatever’s in there, they want it – bad. Someone opens the jar, and the sailors rush to forward with their tin cups. They take a sip, and they’re in heaven.
What were our sailors waiting for? Well, I’ll give you a hint: “SRD” stands for “Service Rum Department.” Yeah, you read right, rum – “Got a little Captain in you?”/Pirates of the Carribbean grog.
According to Charles Coulombe, author of Rum: The Epic Story of the Drink That Conquered the World, “each battalion [of the British Royal Navy] was issued its own supply of rum, drawn from the three hundred gallons given each twenty-thousand-man division.” Nelson’s blood, Demon Water, Navy Neaters, Barbados Water, Screech – whatever you call it, rum rationing caused for one bleary-eyed navy. (Those this is the same Navy that single-handedly took down the mighty Spanish Armada, so maybe it wasn’t so bad!)
The tradition was picked up by the US Navy, and remained a staple of our naval life until President Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of the Navy issued General Order 99 on 1 June 1914, prohibiting all alcohol on board ships and thus killing the rum ration. They replaced the rum ration with a coffee ration, and we had a much more alert (and much less prone to Sailing Under the Influence) navy. The name of the Secretary of the Navy? Josephus “Joe” Daniels – hence, a “cup of joe.”
It’s an awesome story, and it makes total sense. There’s only one problem – it’s not true.
Turns out that, according to our myth-busting hero Barbara Mikkelson over at Snopes.com, “cup of joe” doesn’t come into popularity until 1933 – way after ol’ Josephus rained on our sailors’ parade with General Order 99. She says, There are…stronger theories for how "coffee" came to be "joe"…The first asserts that "joe" is a corruption of one of two other slang words for coffee: java and jamoke, the latter itself a compression of java and mocha. Under that theory, a "cup of jamoke" could easily have slip-slid its way into being a "cup of joe." People do love to shorten their slang terms, after all. It just goes to show: sometimes the most appealing story isn’t the one you want to take to the bank. So enjoy your cup of jamoke, and remember: sometimes fact checking is your best friend!
OK, picture this. It’s an early morning in the 1800s, and we’re on the deck of great British naval ship. The sailors are clamoring around an earthenware jar marked, weirdly, “SRD.” Whatever’s in there, they want it – bad. Someone opens the jar, and the sailors rush to forward with their tin cups. They take a sip, and they’re in heaven.
What were our sailors waiting for? Well, I’ll give you a hint: “SRD” stands for “Service Rum Department.” Yeah, you read right, rum – “Got a little Captain in you?”/Pirates of the Carribbean grog.
According to Charles Coulombe, author of Rum: The Epic Story of the Drink That Conquered the World, “each battalion [of the British Royal Navy] was issued its own supply of rum, drawn from the three hundred gallons given each twenty-thousand-man division.” Nelson’s blood, Demon Water, Navy Neaters, Barbados Water, Screech – whatever you call it, rum rationing caused for one bleary-eyed navy. (Those this is the same Navy that single-handedly took down the mighty Spanish Armada, so maybe it wasn’t so bad!)
The tradition was picked up by the US Navy, and remained a staple of our naval life until President Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of the Navy issued General Order 99 on 1 June 1914, prohibiting all alcohol on board ships and thus killing the rum ration. They replaced the rum ration with a coffee ration, and we had a much more alert (and much less prone to Sailing Under the Influence) navy. The name of the Secretary of the Navy? Josephus “Joe” Daniels – hence, a “cup of joe.”
It’s an awesome story, and it makes total sense. There’s only one problem – it’s not true.
Turns out that, according to our myth-busting hero Barbara Mikkelson over at Snopes.com, “cup of joe” doesn’t come into popularity until 1933 – way after ol’ Josephus rained on our sailors’ parade with General Order 99. She says, There are…stronger theories for how "coffee" came to be "joe"…The first asserts that "joe" is a corruption of one of two other slang words for coffee: java and jamoke, the latter itself a compression of java and mocha. Under that theory, a "cup of jamoke" could easily have slip-slid its way into being a "cup of joe." People do love to shorten their slang terms, after all. It just goes to show: sometimes the most appealing story isn’t the one you want to take to the bank. So enjoy your cup of jamoke, and remember: sometimes fact checking is your best friend!
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