café au lait

• coffee au lait, cafe au lait

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

• IPA^(key): /ˌkæfeɪ əʊ ˈleɪ/, /kæˌfeɪ əʊ ˈleɪ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪ

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

1. 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.

2. Coffee and hot milk served in separate jugs as a breakfast drink.
3. 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.^[1]

• café au lait birthmark
• café au lait spot

• cafe au lait

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

• IPA^(key): /kafeolɛ/, [kʰafeoˈlɛ]

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

1. café au lait

• “café au lait” in Den Danske Ordbog
• café au lait on the Danish Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^da

• IPA^(key): /ka.fe o lɛ/

• Audio:

  (file)

café au lait m (plural cafés au lait)

1. white coffee, coffee with milk

   Deux cafés au lait, s’il vous plait.

   Two white coffees, please.

• → Danish: café au lait
• → English: café au lait
• → Mandarin: 咖啡歐蕾 / 咖啡欧蕾 (kāfēiōulěi)

café au lait (invariable)

1. light brown, café au lait

   une peau café au lait ― light brown skin