Tea, noun:
5. Used as a general name for infusions made in the same way as tea (sense 2), usually from the leaves, blossoms, or other parts of plants; mostly used medicinally, sometimes as ordinary drinks.
Commonly with defining words, as alehoof, balm, beef, camomile, camphor, coffee, cowslip, hartshorn, laurel, lemon, lemon-grass, poppy, rosemary, sage, saloop, sassafras, senna, tilleul, valerian, willow tea: see these words. So humorously limestone tea (quot. 1723).
1666 Philos. Trans. 1665–6 (Royal Soc.) 1 250 They dry..Sage-leaves..and prepare them like The, and..get for one pound of it, four times as much The.
1699 J. Evelyn Acetaria 27 Some of them [flowers] are Pickl'd, and divers of them make also very pleasant and wholsome Theas, as do likewise the Wild Time, Bugloss, Mint, &c.
1723 W. Stukeley Let. 22 July in W. C. Lukis Family Mem. W. Stukeley (1887) III. 249, I am just drinking your health in a swinger of limestone thea [Bath water].
1724 I. Watts Logick i. iv. §4 Tea, which was the proper name of one sort of Indian leaf, is now-a-days become a common name for many infusions of herbs, or plants, in water: as sage-tea, alehoof-tea, limon-tea, etc.
1727 A. Hamilton New Acct. E. Indies II. l. 222 He treated me with Tartarian Tea, which I took to be Beans boyled in Milk, with some salt.
1731 Gentleman's Mag. 1 314 Of some of these Ingredients [Marsh Mallow, &c.] so dried, make Tea, as you do common Tea, with boiling hot Water.
1778 R. James Diss. Fevers 135 Any syrup, jelly of currants, barley-water, gruel, or any sort of tea.
1783 S. Chapman in Med. Communications 1 305 He was advised to leave off drinking foreign tea, and to drink valerian, or rosemary, tea.
1795 C. R. Hopson tr. C. P. Thunberg Trav. (ed. 2) I. 128 Of the leaves of the barbonia cordata the country people made tea.
1863 H. W. Bates Naturalist on River Amazons I. iv. 152 The men had made a fire in the galley to make tea of an acid herb, called ‘erva cidreira’.
1866 J. Lindley & T. Moore Treasury Bot. II. 1127 Lemon-grass Tea, an infusion of the leaves of Andropogon Schœnanthus, substituted for tea in many of the interior districts of India.
1866 J. Lindley & T. Moore Treasury Bot. I. 112 Tea..of heaven, a Japanese name for the leaves of Hydrangea Thunbergii.
1881 Trans. Obstetr. Soc. 22 32 The word ‘tea’ is by the natives of this island [Jamaica] applied to any infusion made from leaves of plants either fresh or dry. ‘Cotton leaf tea’ is made from the green leaves of one of the shrubs that produces the cotton of commerce.
1893 S. Baring-Gould Cheap Jack Zita II. xvi. 41 It is given poppy tea, and that sends it to sleep.
~The Oxford English Dictionary.
Does it count as an error if ~350 years old?
hS
