Source : Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Coffeehouse \Cof"fee*house`\, n.
   A house of entertainment, where guests are supplied with
   coffee and other refreshments, and where men meet for
   conversation.

         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.

Source : WordNet®

coffeehouse
     n : a small restaurant where drinks and snacks are sold [syn: {cafe},
          {coffee shop}, {coffee bar}]