English called drinking vessels cups for a thousand years
A cup is a small open-mouthed drink container, often holding about 6–16 U.S. fluid ounces (177–473 ml), made of pottery, glass, plastic, or metal. English has used cup for a drinking vessel since at least the year 1000.
Wierzbicka and Keith Allan’s “On Cup” (2020) compare definitions across languages and experts.
Many languages, English, French, German, Polish and Russian among them, separate mugs from cups, and Wierzbicka ties the split to use: cups are for drinking seated at a table, mugs for anywhere. A saucer protects the table but is a nuisance elsewhere, which explains the tapered cup and cylindrical mug, and a mug's bigger handle, thicker walls and larger volume suit carrying it about, while cups come in matched sets for more formal occasions. Any transparent cup tends to be called a glass or tumbler whatever it is made of.
Cups go back to the Stone Age, many early examples coming from burials where they may have held offerings. The Bell Beaker culture, named for its inverted-bell beakers, marks the start of the European Bronze Age around 2800 BC, and the solid gold Ringlemere Cup dates from about 1600 BC. Horn-shaped rhytons were the elite cup across the Iron Age Mediterranean from Greece to Persia, Greek cups had wide shallow bowls with two horizontal handles, and by the 2nd century AD wealthy Romans preferred glass.
Chinese lacquer flanged cups appear in elite graves of the Warring States period, and Andean societies made tall waisted qiru from 100 to 600 AD. Traces of caffeinated Yaupon tea survive in spiked-handle cups from the south-eastern United States. In medieval Europe elites favoured stemmed metal cups with covers, a form surviving in sporting trophies and church chalices; glass later took over for wine and beer, and in the early 18th century Europeans added a single vertical handle and a saucer to a Chinese-style bowl, creating the teacup.
Source: Cup
