Added 9 October 2026
tea
/tiː/ noun
In Latin: thea Wiktionary
noun Definition from WordNet 3.1, Princeton University. Pronunciation from Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org. More about tea at Wordnik → Where our words come from →
-
A beverage made by steeping tea leaves in water.
iced tea is a cooling drink
-
A light midafternoon meal of tea and sandwiches or cakes.
an Englishman would interrupt a war to have his afternoon tea
-
A tropical evergreen shrub or small tree extensively cultivated in e.g. China and Japan and India; source of tea leaves.
tea has fragrant white flowers
Origin
First appears c. 1655, in the English translation Álvaro Semedo’s writings. 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. Cognates The word for “tea” in many languages is of Sinitic origin (due to China being the origin of the plant), and thus there are many cognates; see translations.
From Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org (CC BY-SA)