It is amazing how easily I can be completely derailed. To be fair, I’ve managed to surround myself with individuals who don’t think this is odd and find it curiously charming or interesting. You can see how that sort of audience response leads to propagation. Anyway, this week’s Fritter was about barista.

Not the people who work as baristas, but the term itself. Understand, and feel free to wander off now because this rant falls under the same umbrella as the Oxford comma—last Christmas had strongly worded feedback for the annual card regarding this matter—thus this week’s several hours’ debate really comes as no surprise.

Also, the Internet is the zero sum of all knowledge, so not helpful.

Back to the point. Barista. I can’t recall now, but needless to say I read or heard somewhere that barista as a term had been around since the early twentieth century.

BRAIN: What? Isn’t that some bullsh*t coffee marketing term?

ARTICLE: Italian, common gender

BRAIN: Common gender??? baristA… ‘A’ is not common gender in Latin derivative languages.

Here the conversation/debate/moral outrage at this claim escalates as another party starts bringing in the Latin at which point I’m climbing the walls convinced that it is some Starbucks’ invention like whatever they call their cup sizes: tall, grande, venti. Another divergence down the venti rant, which we’re skipping. This all devolves into a Latin search and discussion, which at this point, I’m like, “Screw this” and I go to the bookshelf and retrieved the OED. Still cranky about my two tome abridged set instead of the twenty tome set I wanted—bitter, not bitter.

Lie.

Totally cheated.

And there it is: L20

LATE 20th century, 1970-1999

*CROWS wildly*