Meaning

noun a beverage made by steeping tea leaves in water

noun a light midafternoon meal of tea and sandwiches or cakes

noun a tropical evergreen shrub or small tree extensively cultivated in e.g. China and Japan and India; source of tea leaves

originFirst 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…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0