caffeinated

American  

[kaf-uh-ney-tid] / ˈkæf əˌneɪ tɪd /

adjective

1. containing caffeine.

   a caffeinated soft drink.

---

verb

1. the simple past tense and past participle of caffeinate.

caffeinated British  

/ ˈkæfɪˌneɪtəd /

adjective

1. 1. with no natural caffeine removed

   2. with added caffeine

2. highly stimulated by caffeine

---

Etymology

Origin of caffeinated

caffeine + -ate ¹ + -ed ²

Explanation

Use caffeinated to describe anything that contains the stimulant typically found in coffee, like your caffeinated iced tea or your caffeinated co-workers who drink lattes all day. If you're drinking a beverage that has caffeine in it, it's caffeinated — and now, so are you! Tea and coffee are naturally caffeinated; in fact, if they're specifically described as caffeinated, it's to distinguish them from decaffeinated varieties, in which the caffeine has been removed. Caffeinated is from caffeine, which was coined by a 19th-century chemist from Kaffee, "coffee" in German, and the chemical suffix -ine.

Example Sentences

They’re revived — buzzing, even; at the glorious point in the caffeinated beverage where everything is beautiful, nothing hurts and at least one of them feels like a creative genius.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 10, 2026

They also note that they lacked details about several potentially important factors such as the type of coffee consumed, when it was consumed, the exact caffeine content, and whether participants drank other caffeinated beverages.

From Science Daily • Dec. 4, 2025

She headed to PepsiCo’s headquarters in Purchase, N.Y., for research and sampled sugary, caffeinated sodas for six hours straight.

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 22, 2025

He considers the quality of the caffeinated beverages to be "pretty good".

From Barron's • Nov. 16, 2025

But coffee itself tasted to him like caffeinated stomach bile.

From "An Abundance of Katherines" by John Green