café au lait

English

Borrowed from French café au lait (literally “coffee with milk”).

café au lait (countable and uncountable, plural café au laits or cafés au lait)

A mixture of coffee and hot milk.
Coordinate terms: caffè latte, latte, café noir
- 1985, Margaret Atwood, “Soul Scrolls”, in The Handmaid’s Tale, Toronto, Ont.: McClelland and Stewart, →ISBN, page 164:
  It was like using a language I'd once known but had nearly forgotten, a language having to do with customs that had long before passed out of the world: café au lait at an outdoor table, with a brioche, absinthe in a tall glass, or shrimp in a cornucopia of newspaper; things I'd once read about but had never seen.
Coffee and hot milk served in separate jugs as a breakfast drink.
A light coffee colour.
café au lait:
- 1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 240:
  Seen all of a piece like this, in a picture that fits snugly into the lens of any camera, Kersey is a peaceful, multi-coloured Toytown of a village, whose red-tiled roofs are subdued by just the right amount of weathering and lichen, and whose overhanging gables thrust forward in a quiet brilliance of red-and-yellow ochre, pink, white and café-au-lait.

Oxford Canadian Spelling indicates the preferred plural form is cafés au lait.

coffee with milk

colour

^ Robert Pontisso and Eric Sinkins, editors (1999), Oxford Canadian Spelling, Oxford University Press, published 2004, →ISBN, page 72, column 1

From French café au lait (“coffee with milk”).

café au lait c (singular definite café au laiten or café au lait'en, plural indefinite café au laiter or café au lait'er)

Declension of *café au lait*
common gender	singular		plural
common gender	indefinite	definite	indefinite	definite
nominative	café au lait	café au laiten café au lait'en	café au laiter café au lait'er	café au laiterne café au lait'erne
genitive	café au laits	café au laitens café au lait'ens	café au laiters café au lait'ers	café au laiternes café au lait'ernes