Caffè Americano () or Americano (shortened from or American Spanish: café americano, literally American coffee) is a style of coffee prepared by adding hot water to espresso, giving it a similar strength to, but different flavor from, regular drip coffee. The strength of an Americano varies with the number of shots of espresso and the amount of water added. The name is also spelled with varying capitalization and use of diacritics: e.g., café americano. In the United States, “Americano” is used broadly to mean combining hot water and espresso in either order, but in a narrower definition it refers to adding water to espresso (espresso on the bottom), while adding espresso to a smaller volume of water (espresso on the top) is instead referred to as a long black.