tea
Forms
- Plural
- teas
- Comparative
- more tea
- Superlative
- most tea
- present (v1)
- tea
- past (v2)
- teaed
- past participle (v3)
- teaed
- present participle
- teaing
- 3rd person singular
- teas
Definitions
1.The drink made by infusing these dried leaves or buds in hot water.
- She is drinking her tea right now.
- Would you like some tea?
2.The tea plant (Camellia sinensis); (countable) a variety of this plant.
- Darjeeling tea is grown in India.
3.The dried leaves or buds of the tea plant; (countable) a variety of such leaves.
- Go to the supermarket and buy some Darjeeling tea.
- Not for all the tea in China.
4.Specifically sweet tea, an iced tea supersaturated with sugar.
- Do you want to drink tea or coffee?
- I want a cup of tea.
- I prefer tea over coffee.
1.Good-looking, sexy.(slang)
1.To drink tea.
- We tea’d with May, and had to wait over an hour for a taxi!
- I dined yesterday at | three on mutton chops and 1/2 pint of E[ast] I [ndian] sherry, and then tead and muffined' at 8.
- We coffeed and tead and smoked a trench torch with Grand Master Browning, and cranked our Cadillac for another station.
2.To take afternoon tea (a light meal).
3.To give tea to.
- This gentleman was presented by Colonel C. E. S. Wood, and was entertained here, wined, dined, tead, breakfasted, coffeed and luncheoned, and we bought his pictures.
- And they’ve got Professor Hummums with ’em, the great Everlasting Star of the Nineteenth Century, which he has breakfasted and dined and tea’d and supped here ever since yesterday.
- But one or two evil-disposed characters muttered they might be sure the lady had her own turn to serve, and they might be sure they wasn't "teaed and muffined and sandwiched for nothing!"
Frequency
Overall
Common· #1894
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Uncommon
- General reading & writing
- Common
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Uncommon
Related words
Etymology
First appears c. 1655, in the writings of Álvaro Semedo. From Dutch thee, from Hokkien 茶 (tê) (Amoy dialect), from Old Chinese, ultimately from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *s-la (“leaf, tea”). Introduced to English and other Western European languages by the Dutch East India Company, who sourced their tea in Amoy; compare Malay teh along the same trade route. Doublet of chai and cha (and, distantly, the first element of lahpet), from same Proto-Sino-Tibetan root; see discussion of cognates.