tea
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: enpr: tē
ipa: /tiː/
ipa: [tʰɪj ~ tʰiː]
enpr: tē
ipa: /ti/
ipa: [tʰi]
homophone: T
homophone: te
homophone: tee
homophone: ti
rhymes: -iː
Forms: form: teas
form: teaing
form: teaed
form: teaed
form: tea'd
form: tea'd
form: tead
form: tead
form: tay
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.
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. These are from one of two proximate sources, reflected in the phonological shape: forms with a stop (e.g. /t/) are derived from Min Nan tê, while forms with an affricate (e.g. /tʃ/) are derived from other Sinitic languages, like Mandarin chá or Cantonese caa4 (all written as 茶). Different languages borrowed one or the other form (specific language and point in time varied), reflecting trade ties, generally Min Nan tê if by ocean trade from Fujian, Cantonese caa4 if by ocean trade from Guangdong, or northern Chinese chá if by overland trade or by ocean trade from India.
Thus Western and Northern European languages borrowed tê (with the exception of Portuguese, which uses chá; despite being by ocean trade, their source was in Macao, not Amoy), while chá borrowings are used over a very large geographical area of Eurasia and Africa: Southern and Eastern Europe, and on through Turkish, Arabic, North and East Africa, Persian, Central Asian, and Indic languages. In Europe the tê/chá line is Italian/Slovene, Hungarian/Romanian, German/Czech, Polish/Ukrainian, Baltics/Russian, Finnish/Karelian, Northern Sami/Inari Sami. tê was also borrowed in European trade stops in Southern India and coastal Africa, though chá borrowings are otherwise more prevalent in these regions, via Arabic or Indic, due to earlier trade. The situation in Southeast Asia is complex due to multiple influences, and some languages borrowed both forms, such as Malay teh and ca.
Sense 10 (“information, especially gossip”) may be originally from T standing for truth, which evolved into tea. An alternative explanation dates back to gay African-American culture in the 1970s and alludes to women gossiping over afternoon tea.
Senses: examples: text: We tea’d with May, and had to wait over an hour for a taxi!
ref: 1916 March 28, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, “Elizabeth”, in William Shawcross, editor, Counting One’s Blessings: The Selected Letters of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, published 2012, page 32:
text: 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.
ref: 1837, Benjamin Disraeli, Benjamin Disraeli Letters: 1835-1837, Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press, published 1982, →ISBN, page 319:
text: We coffeed and tead and smoked a trench torch with Grand Master Browning, and cranked our Cadillac for another station.
ref: 1921, Desmos of Delta Sigma Delta, page 41:
glosses: To drink tea.
examples: text: The wind was high and the hills ditto, and both being against us we were late in reaching Hitchin (30 from Cambridge), so giving up the idea of reaching Oxford we toiled on through Luton, on to Dunstable (47), where we teaed moderately […]
ref: 1877, The Bicycling Times and Tourist's Gazette, page 38:
glosses: To take afternoon tea (a light meal).
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1858, Benedict Cruiser, “Of the Agonising Process by which that which was once a Bower of Bliss was converted into a Cave of Despair”, in George Augustus Sala, editor, How I Tamed Mrs. Cruiser, London: James Blackwood, page 129:
text: In half an hour they had all been tea’d and coffeed and refreshed by the nurses, and shortly after were all undressed and put to bed clean and comfortable, and in a droll state of grateful wonder;
ref: 1863, chapter I, in Hospital Transports. A Memoir of the Embarkation of the Sick and Wounded from the Peninsula of Virginia in the Summer of 1862., Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, page 25:
text: 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!"
ref: 1866, Emma Jane Worboise, “The St. Beetha’s Temperance Society”, in St. Beetha’s; or, The Heiress of Arne, London: “Christian World” Office, […]; Jackson, Walford, and Hodder, […], →OCLC, page 213:
text: 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.
ref: 1909, The Public, page 109:
text: After I’d tea’d everyone and Oz had breakfasted them,[…]
ref: 2019, Jordaina Sydney Robinson, Dead Completely (Afterlife Adventures Series):
glosses: To give tea to.