Tea is a culture entirely of its own in Britain. It’s not a stereotype; most Brits really do love their tea and cherish a good cuppa. It’s a form of relaxation and socialization that is key to ‘getting’ Britain (like talking about the weather). But there is a lot of confusion out there – many people don’t realize the difference between High Tea or Afternoon Tea or Cream Tea. So, here’s a short list to help translate the differences.
Cuppa – Your simple cup of tea at any time of the day.
Elevenses – Late morning snack and cup of tea (second breakfast).
Afternoon Tea – A Formal meal where one sits down with cucumber sandwiches, pastries, and fine tea. Usually in a hotel or restaurant around 4 pm.
High Tea – Less formal than afternoon Tea – usually a late afternoon meal after work but before proper dinner.
Cream Tea – A simpler tea service consisting of tea, scones, clotted cream, marmalade or lemon curd.
Royale Tea – Tea service with champagne or sherry at the end.
Celebration Tea – An afternoon tea service where a cake is served for a special occasion.
Tea – Tea can also be used to denote the dinner meal, which is, of course, confusing to outsiders. I once had a pub owner in the Lake District tell me to ‘enjoy my tea.’ I was having a steak dinner.
Kettle – Where you boil water to make tea. Many Brits will use an electric kettle (which boils water very fast).
Put the Kettle On – To turn on the kettle to brew a cuppa. When company is coming, start the kettle as soon as they say they’re on their way!
Scone – Rich pastry usually filled with currants or raisins, often served with strawberry jam and clotted cream. It’s heaven. There is a debate as to whether it’s ‘scun’ or ‘scone.’ Either is fine!
Tea Towel – Thin towel used for drying dishes after they’ve been washed. Usually, have some kind of lovely decoration on them, and many people collect them.
Tea Break – Coffee break. Most Brits will stop several times during the day to have a cuppa.
Tea Lady – A woman whose sole job in the office was to brew and serve the tea to staff. This job has mostly died out, and office works either use a machine or make their own tea.
Tea Service – A tea service is a set of cups, saucers, and plates, with a milk pitcher, sugar bowl, and teapot.
Tea Tray – Tray used in the service of tea, usually includes the kettle, mugs, teabags, sugar, etc. Everything you need for a cuppa.
Black Tea – The most commonly consumed tea.
Builder’s Tea – Tea traditionally drunk by tradesmen in the course of their workday.
Tea Taster – An expert judge of the beverage, like a wine taster.
Mother – The person who pours and serves the tea. “Shall I be mother?”
Steep – Letting the teabag or tea sit in the tea so it brews. Generally the longer you leave it in, the strong the tea will be.
This is not an exhaustive list and undoubtedly, we’ve left something off – so please add your own additions in the comments below!
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Apropos of the ‘cuppa’: I am a HUGE fan of the television programme ‘Grantchester’, and so far, one of my favourite lines is the new vicar telling the housekeeper, ‘I made you a cappucino’. To which she responds, ‘Cuppa what?!’
To me “high tea” is called just tea (an evening meal), dinner was at midday when I was younger but since we’ve all become American???? it’s now what the evening meal is called.
Here in midwest America, dinner is at mod day and supper in the evening.
I’m Midwest…my family has always said lunch (midday) and dinner (evening).
I’m midwest too and its dinner and supper. Possibly because of our farming background
I have only ever seen cream tea served with jam, usually strawberry. “Putting” the kettle on refers to putting the kettle onto the stove to boil, in the days before electric kettles were invented. The pronunciation of scone, rhyming either with tone or on I’d the subject of a huge debate and depends where in the country you come from. Being a Londoner I say it to rhyme with tone but I get relentlessly teased about it in Scotland where I live! Builders tea refers to VERY strong tea (we talk about being able to stand a spoon in it!) and usually with the addition of 5 or 6 spoonfuls of sugar!
I always wondered what builders tea was. Thanks!
The snack in midmorning is generally called “elevenses” (no i) – I’ve only ever heard it referred to as elevensies since reading online and usually posted from an American source. Elevensies is a term we kids used to call out when playing jacks or stones. Also “high” tea is a full evening meal that workers used to have at the end of the day, so named as it was taken sat a higher table than “low tea” which was taken in the afternoon and generally served at low side tables while the guests sat in armchairs. There is no heavier meal later on after high tea unless you count a light snack which would be supper.
I spelled it wrong. Thanks.
When I first started work a million years ago, I was the youngest in the office and was the “tea girl”. I had to fill the kettle (electric even then), china cups and sauces, milk not refrigerated, and sugar. Everyone in the office stopped and had a cup of tea and biscuit. Then I had to load it all on a tray and carry it down to washroom and wash everthing. Repeat around 3 or 3.30pm. Couldn’t leave it too late or it would too near “tea time” at home!
I think you meant “spelt” not “spelled”.
Jim
Sally, thank you, we had thought “high tea” is what Americans would call “dinner” and there is not another evening meal afterwards. Jonathan, thanks very much for this list, we’ve shared it with Destination Tea followers. For our part, we are holding fast to the original meanings of “afternoon tea” and “high tea,” though some Americans use the two interchangeably. I believe Australia has nearly entirely abandoned proper nomenclature, mostly using “high tea” for the afternoon tea service.
Cream teas are never served with marmalade- marmalade is only eaten with breakfast!l (Unthinkable!!!)! And not with lemon curd either. Only jam. Mostly strawberry jam; at a push raspberry.
The scone (rhymes with ‘tone’)/ scone (rhymes with ‘on’) is really regional and debate gets quite heated! Even more so is the debate of how one applies the cream and jam- which goes on top! This again is regional. In the south east of England, definitely cream on top (like icing)… travesty any other way. My husband is from Northern Ireland and puts cream underneath the jam (like butter). We now live in Somerset and there is real tension between the Devon way and the Somerset way as neighbouring counties!
We’re funny folk!
I was going to make the same comment – Never marmalade on scones, lemon curd may be acceptable as a personal abberation (I love lemon curd), but always jam on scones. I’m from Cornwall where they say you should put the jam on first, then cream on top, but Devon spread them the other way around.
Hope to visit Cornwall in the summer when i return for a family wedding. As i recall from childhood the color of Cornish cream is much yellower than Devon and Dorset. Yum. Also to mention when i was young my mum also often served crumpets with tea – particulary on Saturdays when we watch the soccer results and she checked her pools!
There are other explanations for high tea. One it is served on a high table or dining table. Thus afternoon tea is on a low table like a coffee table. Another explanation is that high tea requires a knife and fork but afternoon tea is strictly finger food.
Then there’s the “Tea First”or “Milk First” into the tea cup, debate….I’ll leave that one to you to explain!!
I was told that it has to do with the quality of the tea cups used. If you have fine china cups you put the milk in first to avoid the heat damaging the cup; if the cup is not fine china (or is a mug) you pour the tea first and add the milk. Thus putting the milk in first is more “high class”. Regular folks put in the tea first.
Alternatively, fine china can withstand the shock of the hot tea so the milk goes in after the tea so that you can judge how much to put in. Lesser quality cups need the milk first so as to cushion the shock. People who put the milk first are called “prelactationists”
Jim
Jonathan
Thank you for defining the many terms of “tea”.
Please emphasize in your blog that “high tea” is a working class meal; not the glamorous event Americans believe it to be. That elegant event is Afternoon Tea. The confusion occurs because many Americans think ‘high’ refers to high class. They also wrongly assume “Afternoon tea “ is just a cup of tea, rather than an event.
Aloha,
Jackie (a Brit)
A good addition to the list is tea pot like the one in your picture at st the top. A pot to brew the tea in that can serve a number of people from a small tea pot that serves one to a large tea pot that serves several people. Though many people would bypass this stage for their everyday cup of tea and make their cuppa in a mug using boiling water straight from the kettle. The other one would be that most people drink tea from a mug though it would often still be called a cup off tea. However a tea cup is a smaller cup often bone china sat on a saucer. That is how afternoon tea is served. Love all this.
You need a top ten of slang words for a cup of tea
Char
Splosh
Rosy
Brew
Cuppa
That’s all I got. Not including the ‘T’ sign formed by one forearm placed horizontally on the vertical other and used nationally as a builders sign for ‘do you want a cup of tea?’
I am from South Yorkshire although I have been living in London a long time. In our house the tea was ‘mashed’ when it was made. Tea’s mashed drink up!
Scone. You lost credibility with that one. It is a Quick Bread not “a pastry”.
This is a new one to me, who calls it a “scun” ? (a typo of “scon” I presume)
The name is forgivable as most people don’t know the history or UK accents that lead to this common slip.
Lets clear it up as it is a little offensive/annoying to a whole nation.
Scone is Scottish (Place name, word and scone bread) and it is pronounced as “scon”. It has the spelling of Scone because it is a Scots word for Stone, Scone is also the town name where kings where crowned upon the Scone of Destiny. Nobody is sure which the bread was named after.
There is one Scots dialect that to the untrained ear will sound like “Sc’own” (like Bone, Tone, Phone) but that is incorrect as they are saying “Scon”. In much the same way that many people mistakenly hear some Americans say “Galf” rather than “Golf” (but they are in fact saying “Golf”). You need to know the accents to decipher the vowel sound variants that can easily throw you off as the listener.
There are a few traditional stories why Scones are called what they are. It was “a Quick Bread fit for the King” or because scones are notoriously “hard as stone” to make without messing it up. It takes knowledge and practice to make a good scone, you need skill to get it right. Modern mixing machines make it easier but that requires less skill and its cheating.
Why “Scon” and not Scone (“Scown”). Given that in Scots you already have a “scone” in “Scone” it could get confusing to talk about a scone on a scone in Scone. When Scots talk about the “scon” they know that they are not referring to Scone the Town or a stone. Sitting upon a scone in Scone eating a scon.
It is always “scon”, never “sc’own”.
(October 2020: I just now chanced upon this article…!) I am an American and a lifelong tea drinker. Now just a month short of turning 77, I’ve yet to have a cup of coffee. When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Chile over fifty years ago, I very much enjoyed the custom of “onces”, a mid-afternoon tea break. The origin (apparently somewhat confused) of this custom seems to be buried in its label. “Onces” (pronounced ‘on-sayes) is Spanish for “elevens”.
Hi!
You have a nice community here!
I am writing a novel, and I wonder do the “upper class” use the word Cuppa? Or is it something they would never say.
Thank you very much!
No they most certainly wouldn’t. They’d ‘take tea’ but that would involve some sandwiches and cake.