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teacup

UK/ˈtiː.kʌp/US/ˈtiː.kʌp/
nounB2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechleans spoken

Other forms: teacups

A teacup is a small china cup with a saucer. Thinner than a mug, and it goes cold far faster.

The thinness is deliberate, since fine bone china was believed to improve the taste and certainly improves the occasion. The handle exists because the cups came from China without one and Europeans found them too hot to hold. Britain has largely moved to mugs for everyday drinking and kept teacups for visitors. A storm in a teacup is a great fuss about something trivial.

Unknown · Public domain

Definitions of teacup

  1. 1nounteacupA small cup with a saucer, used for drinking tea.B2

    “She poured it into a teacup rather than a mug.”

Phrases it lives in

  • a storm in a teacup — a great fuss about something trivial

Where it comes from

From tea + cup.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 33 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

teacup in the wild

  • A teacup is a cup for drinking tea.

    Teacup

  • Higher quality teacups are typically made of fine white translucent porcelain and decorated with patterns.

    Teacup

  • The name is a play on the English idiom "storm in a teacup".

    Teacup in a Storm

  • A yunomi is a tall form of a Japanese teacup, typically made from a ceramic material and having no handle.

    Yunomi

  • Teacups, or spinning teacups, is a type of amusement ride characterized by teacup-shaped spinning vehicles atop a turntable-like floor, which may also spin.

    Teacups

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.