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cup-of-tea

Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.

Letters

10 characters

Language

English

word origin

Source

Wiktionary

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Detailed reference entry for the English word "cup-of-tea", 10-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "cup-of-tea" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "cup-of-tea" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.

cup of tea is aEnglishnoun. It means: Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cup, tea. A cup or mug with tea in it. Pronounced /ˈkʌp əv ˈtiː/.

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Key facts for cup of tea
PropertyValue
Headwordcup of tea
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
IPA/ˈkʌp əv ˈtiː/
Letters10
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

cup of tea is not present in the top-100,000 ranked English corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for cup of tea is 10 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈkʌp əv ˈtiː/. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for cup of tea in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is cup of tea, spelled C-U-P- -O-F- -T-E-A, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cup, tea. A cup or mug with tea in it.
  2. 2
    An activity or domain in which someone is interested or skilled in; one's personal preference.
  3. 3
    three

This word in other languages

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "cup of tea"?
"cup of tea" is spelled C-U-P- -O-F- -T-E-A. The IPA pronunciation is /ˈkʌp əv ˈtiː/.
What does "cup of tea" mean?
As a noun, "cup of tea" means: Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see cup, tea. A cup or mug with tea in it.
How do you pronounce "cup of tea"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "cup of tea" is /ˈkʌp əv ˈtiː/. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "cup of tea" come from?
"cup of tea" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Nearby English words

Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index:

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Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.