tea money
"tea-money" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“tea money” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A bribe, especially for facilitating a business dealing.
Corpus desk
Index EN-tea-money · tea money · English
tea money · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "T" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | tea money |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “tea money” in English
Rare enough to double-check
tea money is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A bribe, especially for facilitating a business dealing.".
tea money doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: Calque of Burmese လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုး (lakhpak-ranyhpui:, “tea money”) likely. The correct English form is tea money, spelled T-E-A- -M-O-N-E-Y.
Definition
- 1A bribe, especially for facilitating a business dealing.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how tea money appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Low-ranking officers in Thailand’s 200,000-strong police force are poorly paid and are infamous for topping up salaries with "tea money" for everything from minor driving offences to serious crimes.
Etymology
Calque of Burmese လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုး (lakhpak-ranyhpui:, “tea money”) likely.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.