latte

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)A drink of coffee made from espresso and steamed milk, generally topped with foam.

   “Lilian Benedict walked into the office carrying two cups of latte.”

   “Yet in “Through a Latte, Darkly”, a new study of how Starbucks has largely avoided paying tax in Britain, Edward Kleinbard […] shows that current tax rules make it easy for all sorts of firms to generate what he calls “stateless income”: […]. In Starbucks’s case, the firm has in effect turned the process of making an expensive cup of coffee into intellectual property.”

   “High-priced lattes and customized drinks helped lift the coffee chain’s US sales in the quarter ending on October 1, the company said Thursday.”

   “Photos of the drink, posted on Chinese social media platform Weibo by the Shanghai Starbucks Reserve Roastery, show a drizzle of dark red sauce atop the latte foam — with a square slice of pork on a skewer resting on the mug rim.”

2. (broadly, countable, uncountable)A similar drink, where the espresso is replaced with some other flavoring ingredient such as chai, maté or matcha (green tea).

   “matcha latte”

3. (attributive, countable, figuratively, informal, uncountable)Affluent leftism.

   “latte liberal”

   “Newt Gingrich accused New York mayor Bill De Blasio of “small soy latte liberalism” in 2014 – emphasising that the only thing more girlish than drinking a big dairy milky coffee was drinking a small vegan milky coffee.”

4. A pillar capped by a hemispherical stone capital with the flat side facing up, used as building supports by the ancient Chamorro people and now used as a sign of Chamorro identity.