Word.ws English Dictionary

all the tea in China

all the tea in China noun: something very valuable or priceless.

Noun

all the tea in China (uncountable)

  1. (excessive, idiomatic) Something very valuable or priceless.
    • I wouldn't trade you away for all the tea in China.
    • KIRK: Ha, ha, ha. Okay, the truth. I am from what, on your calendar, would be the late twenty-third century. I've come back in time to bring two humpback whales with me in an attempt to repopulate the species.
      GILLIAN: Well, why didn't you just say so? I mean, why all the coy disguises?
      KIRK: You...1986, William Shatner, Catherine Hicks, 1:07:18 from the start, in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Paramount Pictures, →OCLC

Synonyms of all the tea in China

Origin of all the tea in China

Because of the large amount of tea found in China, and also its value.

Questions about all the tea in China

What does all the tea in China mean?
All the tea in China means something very valuable or priceless.
What part of speech is all the tea in China?
All the tea in China is a noun.

Words near all the tea in China in the dictionary

  1. all the more
  2. all the rage
  3. all the rave
  4. all the same
  5. all the sudden
  6. all the tea in China
  7. all the time
  8. all the way
  9. all the way to Egery and back
  10. all the way to Sunday
  11. all the while

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: all the tea in China (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-all the tea in China.ogg.

Cite this entry: “all the tea in China.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/all_the_tea_in_china. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.