low tea
low tea noun: a formal afternoon meal comprising light snacks, often accompanied by tea.
Noun
low tea (countable and uncountable, plural low teas)
- A formal afternoon meal comprising light snacks, often accompanied by tea.
- Low tea, the original aristocratic late afternoon break for conversation and dainty delicacies was a very social time and was served in the 'low' part of the day.2008, Emily Thacker, Vinegar & Tea
- Afternoon tea has evolved into a combination of high and low teas. High tea, once called "meat tea", was originally the main meal of the British lower classes, eaten with the family at home at the end of a long workday. Low tea was a light meal or snack, enjoyed by the British upper classes in the...2012, Beverley Dubrin, Tea Culture: History, Traditions, Celebrations, Recipes & More, page 27
- Synonyms:
- afternoon tea
Examples of low tea in a sentence
- Afternoon tea has evolved into a combination of high and low teas.2012, Beverley Dubrin, Tea Culture: History, Traditions, Celebrations, Recipes & More, page 27:
- Counterintuitively, "low tea" has historically been for the upper classes the term used for afternoon tea, while "high tea" was initially the afternoon tea of the working classes.2019, Julia Skinner, Afternoon Tea: A History, page 39:
Synonyms of low tea
Forms of low tea
| plural | low teas |
|---|
Questions about low tea
- What does low tea mean?
- Low tea means a formal afternoon meal comprising light snacks, often accompanied by tea.
- How do you use low tea in a sentence?
- Afternoon tea has evolved into a combination of high and low teas.
- What part of speech is low tea?
- Low tea is a noun.
- What is the plural of low tea?
- The plural of low tea is low teas.
Words near low tea in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: low 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.
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Cite this entry: “low tea.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/low_tea. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.