Cola
nounA sweet, dark, fizzy soft drink flavoured originally with extract of the kola nut.
How to spell cola
4 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce cola
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does cola mean?
- nounA sweet, dark, fizzy soft drink flavoured originally with extract of the kola nut.
Cola in a sentence
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She ordered a cola and a slice of pizza for lunch.
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The vending machine was out of cola by mid-afternoon.
Where does cola come from?
Language of origin: Other
The word cola traces back to West African languages such as Temne and Mende, where a form like kola named the tree whose bitter, caffeine-rich nuts were chewed as a stimulant and used in trade. English picked the term up in the early nineteenth century, originally as 'kola', to describe both the tree and its nut. When American pharmacists in the late 1800s blended extracts of the kola nut with coca leaf to make a fizzy tonic, the drink was named for those two ingredients, and the spelling 'cola' settled in for the beverage. Today most fizzy colas contain little or no real kola extract, yet the name survives as a label for the whole dark, sweet, caffeinated style of soft drink. The 'c' spelling for the drink, beside the older 'k' spelling for the nut, is why people occasionally hesitate over which letter to use.
How the word is built
- cola (the kola tree and its caffeine-rich nut, source of the original flavouring)
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