Spanish tea
- noun
- US
:
té español
- Some local herbalists use Spanish tea as a traditional remedy, despite its pungent smell.
Examples
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The strong odor of Spanish tea filled the garden on warm summer days.
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We found fields overrun with Spanish tea growing wild along the country roads.
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I love drinking Spanish tea in the morning.
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Have you ever tried Spanish tea?
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The strong odor of Spanish tea filled the garden on warm summer days.
-
Some local herbalists use Spanish tea as a traditional remedy, despite its pungent smell.
-
We found fields overrun with Spanish tea growing wild along the country roads.
Synonyms
A herb with a strong smell used in Mexican cooking and traditional medicine
A strong-smelling herb used for cooking and in traditional medicine
A tropical weed from the Americas with a strong unpleasant smell used in traditional medicine
Surface Forms
Morphology
Spanish + tea
A B1 learner who knows 'Spanish' and 'tea' would most likely infer a beverage from Spain or a Spanish-style tea; the attested meaning — a pungent tropical American plant — is a specialized, lexicalized plant name that does not follow from the literal constituents. Because the actual referent is unexpectedly different from the composed literal meaning and must be learned as a conventional name, it is not predictable from the parts.
Etymology
Spanish tea may come from people in Spanish-speaking areas who boiled the leaves to make a simple 'tea' or 'remedy' even though the plant gives off a strong, bad smell. So today Spanish tea refers to that strong-smelling plant often used as a folk 'remedy'.
