Word.ws English Dictionary

severe tea

severe tea noun: a large evening meal, less formal than dinner, typically including various cooked foods served with tea.

Noun

severe tea (plural severe teas)

  1. (archaic) A large evening meal, less formal than dinner, typically including various cooked foods served with tea.
    • Heard Lady Mary, as I left her room yesterday, say to her sympathizing maid, "I shall keep a strict fast and take no dinner to-day." Felt pleased, as in general her appetite is sinfully good; but she added, in a tone of mournful reflection: "Tell Mrs. Jobson to send me a severe tea at six, with...1853, Catherine Sinclair, “The Priest and the Curate”, in London Homes: including The Murder Hole; The Drowning Dragoon; The Priest and the Curate; Lady Mary Pierrepoint; & Frank Vansittart, page 29
    • Now and then he gets an invitation to dinner, sometimes to tea. Not a kettle-drum before dinner, mark you — an invention that had not yet reached Meadowleigh — but a severe tea of the substantial sort.1863, Anne Manning, Meadowleigh: A Tale of English Country Life, page 305

Examples of severe tea in a sentence

  • Jobson to send me a severe tea at six, with fried sole, omelette, muffins, poached eggs, scolloped oysters, and several kinds of preserves."1853, Catherine Sinclair, “The Priest and the Curate”, in London Homes: including The Murder Hole; The Drowning Dragoon; The Priest and the...
  • We had a capital "severe tea" at Robin Hood's Bay in a sweet little old-fashioned inn, with a bow-window right over the seaweed-covered rocks of the strand.1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula, Chartwell Books, published 2024, →ISBN, page 90:

Forms of severe tea

pluralsevere teas

Questions about severe tea

What does severe tea mean?
Severe tea means a large evening meal, less formal than dinner, typically including various cooked foods served with tea.
How do you use severe tea in a sentence?
Jobson to send me a severe tea at six, with fried sole, omelette, muffins, poached eggs, scolloped oysters, and several kinds of preserves."
What part of speech is severe tea?
Severe tea is a noun.
What is the plural of severe tea?
The plural of severe tea is severe teas.

Words near severe tea in the dictionary

  1. severe combined immunodeficiency
  2. severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome
  3. severe gale
  4. severe gales
  5. severe myoclonic epilepsy of infancy
  6. severe tea
  7. severed
  8. severely
  9. severence
  10. severeness
  11. severenesses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: severe 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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