A cup is a small open container used for drinking and carrying drinks. It may be made of wood, plastic, glass, clay, metal, stone, china or other materials, and may have a stem, handles or other adornments. Cups are used for drinking across a wide range of cultures and social classes, and different styles of cups may be used for different liquids or in different situations.

Cups have been used for thousands of years for the purpose of carrying food and drink, as well as for decoration. They may also be used in certain cultural rituals and to hold objects not intended for drinking such as coins.

Types

Names for different types of cups vary regionally and may overlap. Any transparent cup, regardless of actual composition, is likely to be called a "glass"; therefore, while a cup made of paper is a "paper cup", a transparent one for drinking shots is called a "shot glass", instead.

Cups for hot beverages

While in theory, most cups are well suited to hold drinkable liquids, hot drinks like tea are generally served in either insulated cups or porcelain teacups.

A cup is any of a variety of drinkware used to consume food or beverage.

Cup or cups may also refer to:

Cooking

Clothing

Mathematics, science, and technology

The cup product in algebraic topology, denoted by the operator

Music

The cup is a unit of measurement for volume, used in cooking to measure liquids (fluid measurement) and bulk foods such as granulated sugar (dry measurement). It is principally used in the United States and Liberia where it is a legally defined unit of measurement. Actual cups used in a household in any country may differ from the cup size used for recipes; standard measuring cups, often calibrated in fluid measure and weights of usual dry ingredients as well as in cups, are available.

Metric cup

Some countries in the Commonwealth of Nations, notably Australia and New Zealand, define a metric cup of 250 millilitres. Units such as metric cups and metric feet are derived from the metric system but are not official metric units

A "coffee cup" is 1.5 dl or 150 millilitres or 5.07 US customary fluid ounces, and is occasionally used in recipes. It is also used in the US to specify coffeemaker sizes (what can be referred to as a Tasse à café). A "12-cup" US coffeemaker makes 57.6 US customary fluid ounces of coffee, or 6.8 metric cups of coffee.