Word.ws English Dictionary

tisane

/tɪˈzæn/US/tɪˈzæn/

tisane noun: a medicinal drink, originally made from barley soaked in water.

tisane: a medicinal drink, originally made from barley soaked in water
Image: Violette79 from Brooklyn, NY, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

tisane (plural tisanes)

  1. A medicinal drink, originally made from barley soaked in water.
    • Ptisan. A diluent drink which makes a great figure in the dietetic precepts of the ancients.1831, Alexander Macaulay, A dictionary of medicine, designed for popular use, 2nd edition, page 454
    • Towards the end of the week the girls complained of violent headaches and restless nights; and before Monday it was very obvious that they were all in a high fever. Tuesday Isabella was delirious, and Mademoiselle Virginie sent the maid to Covent Garden to buy some herbs, which, she said, would...1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter V, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, →OCLC, page 57
  2. Any beverage of herbs steeped in hot water, similar to tea but not including true tea leaves; herbal tea.
    • As soon as he had opened the door he worked his way back to his high-backed Queen Anne armchair, where he picked up his bone-china cup and took a sip of a rarefied tisane.1993, Will Self, My Idea of Fun

Examples of tisane in a sentence

  • Tuesday Isabella was delirious, and Mademoiselle Virginie sent the maid to Covent Garden to buy some herbs, which, she said, would form a sovereign tisane.1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter V, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London...
  • “Neither,” said Poirot, “I shall go to bed and take a tisane.1928, Agatha Christie, The Mystery of the Blue Train:

Forms of tisane

pluraltisanes
alternative formptisan
alternative formptisane
alternative formtisan

Origin of tisane

From Anglo-Norman tysanne, Middle French ptisane, tisane (“barley water, medicinal drink”), and their source, Latin tisana, variant of ptisana, from Ancient Greek πτισάνη (ptisánē, “peeled barley, barley gruel”), from πτίσσειν (ptíssein, “to peel, to crush”).

Questions about tisane

What does tisane mean?
Tisane means a medicinal drink, originally made from barley soaked in water.
How do you use tisane in a sentence?
Tuesday Isabella was delirious, and Mademoiselle Virginie sent the maid to Covent Garden to buy some herbs, which, she said, would form a sovereign tisane.
What part of speech is tisane?
Tisane is a noun.
How do you pronounce tisane?
Tisane is pronounced /tɪˈzæn/ (UK).
What is the plural of tisane?
The plural of tisane is tisanes.

Words near tisane in the dictionary

  1. TIS-B
  2. Tisa
  3. tisagenlecleucel
  4. Tisamenus
  5. tisan
  6. tisane
  7. tisanes
  8. tisans
  9. tisar
  10. tisars
  11. Tisbury

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tisane (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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