NODE / 0229attestedDutch
thee
tea
- DATE
- 17th century–today
- SENSE
- tea beverage
- FAMILY
- Indo-European / Germanic
- CANONICAL KEY
- node:23:thee:attested:sense:tea-beverage
WALS describes Dutch adoption of a Southern Min form and subsequent diffusion through Europe and Dutch maritime networks.
01ANCESTRAL EDGES
ROOT OF THIS ROOT
GO DEEPERborrowingestablished
Xiamen Min Chinese · Southern Min, attested in modern descriptions · tea beverage茶
tea
- SOUND
- Dutch thee adapts the Southern Min te-type pronunciation with Dutch spelling conventions.
- MEANING
- The meaning remains tea.
- CHRONOLOGY
- Dutch commercial contact with Xiamen and wider Asian maritime trade intensified in the seventeenth century.
- SCHOLAR
- Östen Dahl
- CONFIDENCE
- established — WALS explicitly connects Dutch contacts at Amoy/Xiamen with Dutch thee.
02DIRECT DESCENDANT EDGES
THE NEXT HISTORICAL STEP
DESCENDANTborrowingprobable
Present-Day English · 1655–today · tea beveragetea
the leaves of Camellia sinensis or a beverage made by infusing them
- SOUND
- English tea reflects the Dutch thee-type form; the modern /iː/ follows the wider English raising of earlier /eː/.
- MEANING
- The plant and beverage senses were retained, then English developed additional meal, social-event, infusion, and slang branches.
- CHRONOLOGY
- English is recorded from 1655; Dutch maritime diffusion belongs to the seventeenth century.
- SCHOLAR
- Östen Dahl
- CONFIDENCE
- probable — WALS describes Dutch-mediated European diffusion, while Merriam-Webster compresses the etymology to borrowing from Xiamen Chinese. The Dutch stage is therefore shown but disputed.
03TRANSITIVE DESCENDANT CLOSURE
EVERY REVIEWED BRANCH FROM HERE
This is the complete downstream closure currently supported by the canonical graph. Every displayed step is a real reviewed edge with its own sound claim, meaning claim, scholar, confidence, and citations.
- UNIQUE DESCENDANT NODES
- 1
- REVIEWED EDGES
- 1
- DEEPEST PATH
- 1
- MODERN DOSSIERS REACHED
- 1
HISTORICAL STEP 011 EDGE
STEP 01borrowingprobable
- SOUND
- English tea reflects the Dutch thee-type form; the modern /iː/ follows the wider English raising of earlier /eː/.
- MEANING
- The plant and beverage senses were retained, then English developed additional meal, social-event, infusion, and slang branches.
“Every” means every descendant in the reviewed SET-U graph. It does not convert missing scholarship or missing ingestion into a claim of historical completeness. The coverage ledger remains the honest denominator.
04RECORDED EVIDENCE
ATTESTATIONS / FIRST KNOWN USE
NO RECORDED WITNESS ATTACHED.The reviewed graph does not yet attach a source-reported or directly inspected witness to this canonical form.
05EDITORIAL REUSE
WORD DOSSIERS USING THIS NODE