husband's tea
husband's tea noun: very weak (dilute) tea.
Noun
husband's tea (uncountable)
- Very weak (dilute) tea.
- "WELL, I never! Mrs. Morris, why how poor the tea has got all at once! Why, sure enough, it is as bad as husband's tea now!"1851, Ann Jane, The Mothers' friend, ed. by Ann Jane, page 169
- Some take their tea so hot that its flavour, if it had any, would be lost upon them, and many take it so weak that it can have no flavour in particular. We have also heard of "husband's tea," which sufficiently explains itself.1875, Saturday Review: Politics, Literature, Science and Art, page 442
- Synonyms:
- water bewitched
Synonyms of husband's tea
Antonyms
Origin of husband's tea
From the idea that a selfish housewife might drink all the tea before her husband returns from work, and refill the pot with water.
Questions about husband's tea
- What does husband's tea mean?
- Husband's tea means very weak (dilute) tea.
- What part of speech is husband's tea?
- Husband's tea is a noun.
Words near husband's tea in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: husband's tea (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-husband's tea.wav.
Cite this entry: “husband's tea.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/husband%27s_tea. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.