teatime
teatime noun: the traditional time, in the late afternoon, for serving tea (the meal).
Noun
teatime (countable and uncountable, plural teatimes)
- The traditional time, in the late afternoon, for serving tea (the meal).
- In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know that you've had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually...1988, Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
- A social gathering or conversation centered on sharing gossip, rumors, or other personal news.
- It's me, hi
I'm the problem, it's me
At teatime, everybody agrees
I'll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror
It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero2022, Taylor Swift, “Anti-Hero”
- It's me, hi
Forms of teatime
| plural | teatimes |
|---|---|
| alternative form | tea-time |
Origin of teatime
From tea + time. Compare Saterland Frisian Teetied (“teatime”), West Frisian teetiid (“teatime”), Dutch theetijd (“teatime”), German Teezeit (“teatime”), Danish tetid (“teatime”), Swedish tetid (“teatime”), Icelandic tetími (“teatime”).
Questions about teatime
- What does teatime mean?
- Teatime means the traditional time, in the late afternoon, for serving tea (the meal).
- What part of speech is teatime?
- Teatime is a noun.
- What is the plural of teatime?
- The plural of teatime is teatimes.
Words near teatime in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: teatime (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-teatime.wav.
Cite this entry: “teatime.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/teatime. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.