tea bag
1 Americannoun
-
tea bags
plural
verb (used with object)
noun
Usage
What does tea-bag mean? Tea-bagging is the act of placing one's testicles in the mouth of another person, often repeatedly, raising and lowering it like a person dipping a tea bag. Content warning: the following sections include further references to sexual content, which is involved in the history and use of the slang term.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of tea bag1
First recorded in 1900–05
Origin of tea-bag2
From its resemblance to dipping a tea bag in a cup of hot water
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Jurado swirled around a Rooibos tea bag with a tag read, “Your Actions Prove Your Greatness.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 14, 2024
He told them to use a plain old Lipton tea bag soaked in water and gently squeezed out.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 25, 2023
A thoroughly British storm in a teacup is coming to the boil after a leading brand said it has devised a tea bag it claims can brew the perfect cuppa in 60 seconds.
From BBC ● Sep. 14, 2023
Tea works, especially when you can order a cup of hot water and rip the packaging off the tea bag yourself.
From Salon ● Jun. 19, 2023
Olanna placed her cup against her cheek, to warm it, to delay the first sip of weak tea made from a reused tea bag.
From "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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Instead she moved to London to become a writer, working a series of “really awful” day jobs, including one in a tea-bag factory.
From New York Times ● Apr. 2, 2023
The idea for the tea-bag protest probably made its way to his in box, indirectly, from a message board attached to the libertarian financial-news blog Market Ticker.
From Salon ● May 14, 2010
Then the hero discovers, courtesy of McDowall's tea-bag reading, that he is pregnant.
From Time Magazine Archive
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“Yes, mum,” said the man obediently; and as it was placed by the fire, Aunt Georgie plunged her tea-bag in, and held it beneath the boiling water with a piece of stick.
From The Dingo Boys The Squatters of Wallaby Range by W. S. (Walter S.) Stacey
He'd get the sugar first, and then, if it looked good enough, the flour-bag would come out, then the tea-bag.
From Children of the Bush by Henry Lawson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.