Word.ws English Dictionary

tea leaf paradox

tea leaf paradox proper noun: the phenomenon whereby tea leaves in a cup of tea migrate to the center and bottom of the cup after being stirred (due to friction towards the bottom), rather than being forced to the edges, as would be expected in a spiral centrifuge.

tea leaf paradox: the phenomenon whereby tea leaves in a cup of tea migrate to the center and bottom of the cup after...
Image: Apoc2400, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Proper noun

the tea leaf paradox

  1. The phenomenon whereby tea leaves in a cup of tea migrate to the center and bottom of the cup after being stirred (due to friction towards the bottom), rather than being forced to the edges, as would be expected in a spiral centrifuge.

Questions about tea leaf paradox

What does tea leaf paradox mean?
Tea leaf paradox means the phenomenon whereby tea leaves in a cup of tea migrate to the center and bottom of the cup after being stirred (due to friction towards the bottom), rather than being forced to the edges, as would be expected in a spiral centrifuge.
What part of speech is tea leaf paradox?
Tea leaf paradox is a proper noun.

Words near tea leaf paradox in the dictionary

  1. tea kitchens
  2. tea ladies
  3. tea lady
  4. tea lead
  5. tea leaf
  6. tea leaf paradox
  7. tea leaves
  8. tea light
  9. tea lights
  10. tea loaf
  11. tea loaves

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tea leaf paradox (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 leaf paradox.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tea_leaf_paradox. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.