Instant Coffee

WORD STUDIES

If you run out of milk and a miracle?

I read this in Hebrew and was really confused. Finally I discovered that it is common for Israelis to call instant coffee nes or nex נס. Which means miracle. This is obviously from the brand name nescafe but is also used as a generic word for instant coffee similar to how the cellphone company pele4fon became the generic word for cellphones. The brand name Nescafe in Hebrew means 'miracle coffee', how fitting for this elixir you don't have to brew or use filters.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/word-of-the-day/word-of-the-day-nescafe-1.466937