from
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Coffeehouse \Cof"fee*house`\ (k[add]"f[-e]*hous`), n.
A house of entertainment, where guests are supplied with
coffee and other refreshments, and where men meet for
conversation.
[1913 Webster]
The coffeehouse must not be dismissed with a cursory
mention. It might indeed, at that time, have been not
improperly called a most important political
institution. . . . The coffeehouses were the chief
organs through which the public opinion of the
metropolis vented itself. . . . Every man of the upper
or middle class went daily to his coffeehouse to learn
the news and discuss it. Every coffeehouse had one or
more orators, to whose eloquence the crowd listened
with admiration, and who soon became what the
journalists of our own time have been called -- a
fourth estate of the realm. --Macaulay.
[1913 Webster]