Chapter TEA of T by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

Darwin, Botanic Garden, Loves of the Plants, Canto ii.

1844.—“The Polish word for tea, Herbata, signifies more properly ‘herb,’ and in fact there is little more of the genuine Chinese beverage in the article itself than in its name, so that we often thought with longing of the delightful Russian Tshai, genuine in word and fact.”—J. I. Kohl, Austria, p. 444.


The following are some of the names given in the market to different kinds of tea, with their etymologies.

1. (TEA), BOHEA. This name is from the Wu-i (dialectically Bú-î)-shan Mountains in the N.W. of Fuh-kien, one of the districts most famous for its black tea. In Pope’s verse, as Crawfurd points out, Bohea stands for a tea in use among fashionable people. Thus:

“To part her time ’twixt reading and bohea,
To muse, and spill her solitary tea.”

Epistle to Mrs Teresa Blount.

[The earliest examples in the N.E.D. carry back the use of the word to the first years of the 18th century.]

1711.—“There is a parcel of extraordinary fine Bohee Tea to be sold at 26s. per Pound, at the sign of the Barber’s Pole, next door to the Brazier’s Shop in Southampton Street in the Strand.”—Advt. in the Spectator of April 2, 1711.

1711.—

“Oh had I rather unadmired remained
On some lone isle or distant northern land;
Where the gilt chariot never marks the way,
Where none learn ombre, none e'er taste bohea.”

Belinda, in Rape of the Lock, iv. 153.

The last quotation, and indeed the first also, shows that the word was then pronounced Bohay. At a later date Bohea sank to be the market name of one of the lowest qualities of tea, and we believe it has ceased altogether to be a name quoted in the tea-market. The following quotations seem to show that it was the general name for “black-tea.”

1711.—“Bohea is of little Worth among the Moors and Gentoos of India, Arrabs and Persians…that of 45 Tale (see TAEL) would not fetch the Price of green Tea of 10 Tale a Pecull.”—Lockyer, 116.

1721.—

“Where Indus and the double Ganges flow,
On odorif’rous plains the leaves do grow,
Chief of the treat, a plant the boast of fame,
Sometimes called green, Bohea's the greater name.”

Allan Ramsay’s Poems, ed. 1800, i. 213–14.

1726.—“A^nno 1670 and 1680 there was knowledge only of Boey Tea and Green Tea, but later they speak of a variety of other sorts…Congo…Pego…Tongge, Rosmaryn Tea, rare and very dear.”—Valentijn, iv. 14.

1727.—“In September they strip the Bush of all its Leaves, and, for Want of warm dry Winds to cure it, are forced to lay it on warm Plates of Iron or Copper, and keep it stirring gently, till it is dry, and that Sort is called Bohea.”—A. Hamilton, ii. 289; [ed. 1744, ii. 288].

But Zedler’s Lexicon (1745) in a long article on Thee gives Thee Bohea as “the worst sort of all.” The other European trade-names, according to Zedler, were Thee-Peco, Congo which the Dutch called the best, but Thee Cancho was better still and dearer, and Chaucon best of all.

2. (TEA) CAMPOY, a black tea also. Kam-pui, the Canton pron. of the characters Kien-pei, “select-dry (over a fire).”

3. (TEA) CONGOU (a black tea). This is Kang-hu (tê) the Amoy pronunciation of the characters Kung-fu, ‘work or labour.’ [Mr. Pratt (9 ser. N. & Q. iv. 26) writes: “The N.E.D. under Congou derives it from the standard Chinese Kung-fu (which happens also to be the Cantonese spelling); ‘the omission of the f,’ we are told, ‘is the foreigner’s corruption.’ It is nothing of the kind. The Amoy name for this tea is Konghu, so that the omission of the f is due to the local Chinese dialect.”]

4. HYSON (a green tea). This is He- (hei and ai in the south) - ch’un, ‘bright spring,’ [which Mr. Ball (Things Chinese, 586) writes yu-ts’in, ‘before the rain’], characters which some say formed the hong name of a tea-merchant named Le, who was in the trade in the dist. of Hiu-ning (S.W. of Hang-chau) about 1700; others say that He-chun was Le’s daughter, who was the