Word.ws English Dictionary

tea money

tea money noun: a bribe, especially for facilitating a business dealing.

Noun

tea money (uncountable)

  1. (Myanmar, Thailand, regional, slang) A bribe, especially for facilitating a business dealing.
    • Low-ranking officers in Thailand’s 200,000-strong police force are poorly paid and are infamous for topping up salaries with "tea money" for everything from minor driving offences to serious crimes.2021 August 25, SCMP Reporter, “Death of Thai man after police extortion attempt captured on viral video, sparks public anger”, in This Week in Asia, South China Morning Post, retrieved 25 Aug 2021

tea money meaning in Thai and Myanmar

tea money in Thai

bribe
ค่าน้ำร้อนน้ำชา kâa-nám-rɔ́ɔn-nám-chaa

tea money in Myanmar

bribe
လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုး lakhpak-ranyhpui:

Origin of tea money

Calque of Burmese လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုး (lakhpak-ranyhpui:, “tea money”) likely.

Questions about tea money

What does tea money mean?
Tea money means a bribe, especially for facilitating a business dealing.
What is tea money in Thai?
Tea money in Thai is ค่าน้ำร้อนน้ำชา (kâa-nám-rɔ́ɔn-nám-chaa). See Tea money meaning in Thai.
What part of speech is tea money?
Tea money is a noun.

Words near tea money in the dictionary

  1. tea loaf
  2. tea loaves
  3. tea maker
  4. tea makers
  5. tea mangrove
  6. tea money
  7. tea oil
  8. tea oil camellia
  9. tea oil camellias
  10. tea oil plant
  11. tea oil plants

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tea money (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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