Cup, Mug, or Glass?

Notes From the Prairie: I Wonder Series #19

Photo by Anna Kumpan on Unsplash

Cradling my coffee at breakfast, I wonder about the different terms we use for containers we drink from, and I decide on these descriptions:

• Glasses are used for cold drinks and are made of glass. They have no handles. Fancy ones have stems.

• Cups are used for hot drinks, curve to a smaller bottom (probably for use with saucers), and have handles my relatives referred to as ears.

• Mugs are larger than cups. They are used for hot drinks, are cylindrical with straight vertical sides, and have ears. But because they are larger than cups, their ears are called handles.

When I sit down at my desk, I decide to look up dictionary definitions. Will dictionaries support my distinctions?

I discover that dictionaries are much less specific than I have been.

Glass

Merriam-Webster online says only “something made of glass.” Then it lists “tumbler” as a drinking glass without a foot or stem. Does this mean that “tumbler” is more correct than “glass” for all that unstemmed drinkware in my cupboard? And how do I account for calling my free containers from fast-food franchises my “glasses”?

I try my hardcover Oxford English Dictionary. Sixteen “glass” definitions fill two pages. The fifth one reads, “a drinking container made of glass.” It alludes to the term “drinking glass.”

Over time, have English speakers simply shortened “drinking glass” to “glass”? OED doesn’t tell me, but I suspect that is the case. Perhaps I do the same when I drop the word “plastic” when I describe my fast-food drink containers. But “plastic glasses” is an oxymoron. Perhaps someday I’ll research this detail, but today that is a rabbit hole I do not want to tumble into.

Neither of those dictionaries limits my drinking glasses to cold contents. Perhaps that is simply circumstantial because glass transmits heat so well. Hot contents in a glass container would burn my hands.

Cup

I like the first definition in Merriam-Webster: “an open usually bowl-shaped drinking vessel.” That settles the shape. But it still says nothing about appendages and temperatures. I read further and Merriam Webster refers to drinking punch from cups. Of course! Those little clear punch containers made of glass are called “punch cups.” Punch is often iced. There goes my hot-contents idea.

I think of other materials used for drinking utensils. What about paper? What term do I use? Paper cups. And I drink cold liquids from them.

And what about Styrofoam cups? They hold tea and coffee, but they have no ears.

And both paper and Styrofoam containers have straight sides. Both are almost cylindrical. But that is how I defined mugs.

I search further. Will the definition of mugs help me?

Mug

Merriam Webster tells me a mug is “a cylindrical drinking cup.” Perhaps I was right about its shape.

I wonder further. Styrofoam cups are almost cylindrical, and I don’t call them mugs.

And beer mugs don’t hold hot drinks. They contain cold beer. Or should I use the term “steins” instead?

I search online for pictures of beer mugs. They pop up in a variety of shapes. Some are not pure cylinders. And some have no handles.

I halt my search. I cannot separate one term from the other with a clear definition. They mix like the swirls of color in the pour painting our adult son taught Marlo and me to make one Christmas. We selected paint colors and let them drizzle slowly into a container. We held a blank canvas firmly against the container top and tipped the two items over together. As we removed the container and then tilted the canvas at varying angles, the paint drifted toward the canvas edges in dizzying swirls and combinations.

In the swirl of meanings, I suddenly empathize with the confusion of my immigrant friends when learning English as a second language. When studying English as adults, they are frequently confounded by the exceptions to rules for English grammar and multiple meanings for one word. Momentarily, I feel the same.

Then I remind myself: All three terms refer to containers for liquids. And dictionaries keep their definitions basic and simple. Words themselves are not hard-edged containers. They shape-shift over decades and centuries. And we are left with a mix of meanings that defies total clarity.

Often I commiserate with my immigrant friends. “Yes, English is complicated. It has more exceptions than rules.”

Then I think but do not say to them: It is also a rich and beautiful language that offers much linguistic pleasure. My friends are not ready to hear that.

Teaching them is fun for me, though. Although English is my native language, I learn new hidden language meanings and structures whenever I teach English as a second language.

I decide to slow down my word-wondering. My brain unscrambles, and I appreciate once more the fluidity and adaptability of word meanings. Glass, cup, and mug have morphed and changed with time as new drinks were invented and as heated drinks became more common. The meanings adapted when new materials such as paper and Styrofoam entered our world and our language.

And, like the flow painting our son helped us make, words are beautiful in their fluidity and in their current state. However, they differ from the flow painting now hanging on our den wall: they never harden into a final form.

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Carol Van Klompenburg is a writer living in Pella, Iowa. She has a BA in English and an MA in Theater Arts, and she is available for reading performances of her work. Her email address is carolvk13@gmail.com.

Her latest book, A World in a Grain of Sand: Lively Little Stories of Household Stuff, is available in Pella from Carol or from Pella’s Curiosity Shop. It can also be ordered from Amazon. Readers are calling it “stirring,” “winsome,” and “delightful.”