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Reader question: Please explain this sentence: “It was only until I read the news report myself that I was forced to smell the coffee.” Smell the coffee? My comments: Well, the speaker uses “smell the coffee” as a metaphor. Apparently nobody’s pinning both the speaker’s arms back and forcing his head down to the edge of a cup of warm coffee, forcing him to say that he likes its aroma. Here, the speaker simply means to say that the news report tells him something he didn’t know, perhaps some unpleasant news, something he’d been unwilling to accept. Now he has to accept it, now that he’s forced to smell the coffee. “Smell the coffee” is shortened from the American idiom “Wake up and smell the coffee”. Picture an American family having coffee at breakfast. The mother, after putting everything, cereals, bread and butter on the dining table discovers one of the boys missing – he’s still slumbering in bed. Coaxing the boy to get up, she might very well say something like: “Wake up to smell the delicious coffee”. Naturally she is hoping the aroma of the coffee will attract the boy’s attention. By saying that, she might also be telling the boy it is broad day light, time to get up and find out what’s on the table for breakfast – as well as what’s going on in the wider world. Whether this is the origin of the expression I know not. Doesn’t matter. It sounds quite plausible, though, doesn’t it? | 
