Word.ws English Dictionary

tea clipper

tea clipper noun: a clipper or fast-sailing vessel formerly employed in the tea trade.

tea clipper: a clipper or fast-sailing vessel formerly employed in the tea trade
Image: Allan C. Green, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

tea clipper (plural tea clippers)

  1. A clipper or fast-sailing vessel formerly employed in the tea trade.
    • There was the Lightning whose record of thirteen days from Boston to Liverpool, many a steam freighter today cannot beat. There was the Flying Cloud, that sailed from New York around the Horn to Frisco in eighty-nine days. Famous clippers both of them, like the Hurricane, Stag Hound, and the Great...1929 February 3, Warren Irvin, “Gallant Wooden Vessels Survive; Stanch Ships from the Era of Sail and the Early Days of Steam Are Still in Use Though Dying One by One Ended as a Coal Hulk. […]”, in...
    • Their wealth of sails (one memorable tea clipper had 63) demanded huge crews while their narrow holds limited them to relatively small cargoes and correspondingly small margins of profit.1978 December 31, Ken Ringle, “Century-Old Laws Still Rule Seamen”, in The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.: The Washington Post Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 06 Jul 2025

Examples of tea clipper in a sentence

  • But they are gone like the British tea clippers, the Titania, Spindrift, Caliph and Lothair, and the Lahloo which won the race from Foo Chow to London in 1870, in ninety-seven days.1929 February 3, Warren Irvin, “Gallant Wooden Vessels Survive; Stanch Ships from the Era of Sail and the Early Days of Steam Are Still in...
  • The variety is endless: Viking longboats, Portuguese carracks, Spanish galleons, British men-of-war, American tea clippers, paddle-wheel steamers and those swift, sleek ocean liners of the 1930s.1989 July 2, Sam Burchell, “Around Home: Ship Models”, in Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, Calif.: Los Angeles Times Communications, →ISSN...
  • The opening of the Suez canal, just after the Cutty Sark was built, quickly made tea clippers redundant as steamers benefited from a shorter sea route.2007 May 21, James Sturcke, Peter Walker, agencies, “Fire devastates Cutty Sark”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian, London...
  • Built in 1869, it was one of the last tea clippers used to transport goods to Britain from as far as Australia2022 April 11, Robert Hardman, “Will you dare climb 70ft up the Cutty Sark's rigging? Famed ship offers London's newest and scariest...

Forms of tea clipper

pluraltea clippers
alternative formtea-clipper

Questions about tea clipper

What does tea clipper mean?
Tea clipper means a clipper or fast-sailing vessel formerly employed in the tea trade.
How do you use tea clipper in a sentence?
But they are gone like the British tea clippers, the Titania, Spindrift, Caliph and Lothair, and the Lahloo which won the race from Foo Chow to London in 1870, in ninety-seven days.
What part of speech is tea clipper?
Tea clipper is a noun.
What is the plural of tea clipper?
The plural of tea clipper is tea clippers.

Words near tea clipper in the dictionary

  1. tea chest bassist
  2. tea chest bassists
  3. tea chests
  4. tea clam
  5. tea clams
  6. tea clipper
  7. tea clippers
  8. tea cloth
  9. tea cloths
  10. tea cosey
  11. tea cosies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tea clipper (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: “tea clipper.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tea_clipper. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.