tea chest
- noun
:
cofre de té
- She carefully stored the finest leaves in the old tea chest in the corner of the room.
Examples
-
During the move, we packed all the assorted teas into a sturdy tea chest for safekeeping.
-
She left her daughter a mahogany tea table and tea chest.
Academic text (1996) -
Pack you in a tea chest?
-
Tilly, certain accusations have been made, requiring me by law to make a thorough search of this tea chest.
-
ADA and FLORA sit among tea chests in the bedroom.
Fiction book (1993) -
The antique tea chest was a beautiful piece of furniture, crafted from solid oak.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
A usually rectangular container with a lid for holding things or the amount it holds
363
1.0
A large strong box for storing clothes or valuables
245
1.3
A thing that holds or stores items, for example a box
189
1.7
A strong wooden box for storing or moving things and the amount inside it
110
3.3
A large strong box for keeping clothes and other things
1
3.2
A wooden box for storing or carrying things like firewood
A large strong box used to store valuable or household items
How Sturdy
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a strong box for storing or transporting tea' is directly compositional from 'tea' (the product) + 'chest' (a sturdy box), so the overall sense is immediately derivable from the parts. This noun-compounding pattern is common in English and in other languages, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily understand the phrase.
Etymology
The noun tea chest comes from the simple picture of a wooden chest used to hold tea when ships carried it long distances. Merchants packed loose leaves into these strong boxes for long trips, so today tea chest means a strong box for 'storing' or 'transporting' tea.