tea biscuit
- noun
- /tiː ˈbɪskɪt/
- UK
:
galleta de té
- He insisted on sending visitors off with care packages: plantains or House of Mangi tea biscuits, wrapped in paper and tied off with yarn.
Examples
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At the café, I enjoyed a delightful cup of tea with a buttery biscuit as a treat.
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I'll need water and towels, clean surfaces, plenty of rich tea biscuits.
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There was a half hour spent over very light refreshments (fruit jello, English tea biscuits, lime punch).
Fiction book (1996) -
They would be in the dark, flower-bedecked downstairs hall and just before entering the dining room for the promised refreshments: the fruit jello, the English tea biscuits, and the lime punch.
Fiction book (1996) -
She served a plate of tea biscuits alongside the hot tea during the afternoon gathering.
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During the meeting, everyone munched on tea biscuits while discussing the agenda.
Synonyms
74
1.0
A small sweet flat cake that you eat as a snack
How Sweet
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a biscuit served with tea' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'tea' (the drink/meal) with 'biscuit' (a small sweet cake), forming a noun–noun compound that denotes a biscuit associated with tea. This compositional pattern and the common collocation 'tea + food' is cross-linguistically familiar, so a B1 learner who knows both words will readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Tea biscuit: The name tea biscuit comes from the simple image of a small, flat biscuit people eat with tea at tea time. So it means a lightly sweet biscuit meant to be served with 'tea'.