The Tea Lexicon: Tea Terms, Trade Words and Ceremony Vocabulary
Compiled by Christian Mauerer, founder of One with Tea · Updated September 2026
Tea carries a vocabulary built over twelve centuries, most of it borrowed. Some words are Japanese, some Chinese, some are trade slang that a nineteenth-century broker in Canton would recognise and nobody else would. This is 133 of them, defined plainly.
Where a word is historical, we cite where it was written down: All About Tea, William H. Ukers, 1935, the reference work the tea trade still quotes. 50 entries carry that citation. Where the 1935 meaning has since shifted, the entry says so rather than quietly correcting it, because the drift is usually the interesting part.
What is here: the language of tea itself, 29 tea types, 24 growing and making, 21 ceremony, 22 tasting, 22 trade and history, 15 regions.
What is not: buying advice. For grades, caffeine numbers, price context and the tools that go with them, see the Matcha Lexicon.
The lexicon at a glance
At a glance:
- 133 terms across six groups, each defined in one or two plain sentences.
- 50 historical entries cited to the printed page of Ukers, All About Tea (1935).
- 48 entries link to a full One with Tea article on the subject.
- Matcha grades, caffeine and prices live in the Matcha Lexicon.
Tea types (29 terms)
The names on the tin: sencha, gyokuro, matcha, hojicha and the rest. Most describe how the leaf was grown, picked or processed rather than a different plant, since every true tea comes from Camellia sinensis.
Growing & making (24 terms)
What happens between field and cup: shading, steaming, rolling, firing and grinding. These steps decide whether a leaf becomes sencha, tencha or something else entirely.
Ceremony (21 terms)
The vocabulary of chanoyu, the Japanese way of tea: the utensils, the thin and thick styles of matcha, and the etiquette around them.
Tasting (22 terms)
The words tasters use for leaf and liquor, from the trade's older cupping terms to umami, the savory taste named in Japan in 1908.
Trade & history (22 terms)
How tea was bought, graded and shipped, much of it recorded in Ukers' 1935 trade dictionary, including meanings that have since drifted.
Regions (15 terms)
Where tea grows and the names the trade gave each origin, in Japan and beyond.
Search the lexicon Interactive
133 terms
Search by term or meaning, or filter by group. 48 entries link through to a full article on that subject.
- Asamushi senchaTea types
- Light-steamed sencha. A shorter steam keeps the leaf intact, giving a clearer liquor and a sharper, more aromatic character.
- BanchaTea types
- Tea from later harvests and coarser leaf. Lower in caffeine, plainer in flavour, and the base for hojicha and much kukicha.
In 1935: Ukers called it "a low grade Japan tea made from coarse leaves. It is not exported." The leaf grade is the same; the export claim is not.
- Black teaTea types
- Fully oxidised tea. Called red tea in China and Japan, after the colour of the liquor rather than the leaf.
- BoheaTea types
- The eighteenth-century English name for the black tea shipped from the Wuyi hills. The tea thrown into Boston harbour was largely this.
- Brick teaTea types
- Tea compressed into solid blocks for transport and, historically, for use as currency along the overland trade routes.
In 1935: Ukers describes it as common grades "mixed with stalk and dust and molded into bricks under high pressure; for the Mongol and Russian trade."
- Ceremonial gradeTea types
- A marketing term, not a regulated standard. No Japanese authority certifies it, which is why the label alone tells you very little.
- CongouTea types
- A blanket nineteenth-century trade name for Chinese black tea, regardless of district. From the Chinese word for labour.
- Culinary gradeTea types
- Matcha sold for cooking and lattes, typically later-harvest leaf. Also unregulated, and also not a guarantee of anything.
- Fukamushi senchaTea types
- Deep-steamed sencha. The longer steam breaks the leaf down further, giving a cloudier cup and a rounder, less astringent flavour.
- GenmaichaTea types
- Green tea blended with roasted rice. Originally a way to stretch expensive leaf, now drunk for the toasted flavour itself.
- Green teaTea types
- Tea whose oxidation is halted immediately after plucking, by steam in Japan and by pan-firing in China.
- GunpowderTea types
- Green tea rolled into tight pellets that unfurl in water. The name is about the shape, not the taste.
- GyokuroTea types
- Shaded leaf tea, steeped rather than milled. The same shading that makes tencha, finished as a loose leaf.
In 1935: Ukers glossed it as "pearl dew" and noted "it is not an export tea." It is exported now.
- HojichaTea types
- Roasted green tea, usually bancha. Roasting drives off most of the astringency and much of the caffeine, leaving a toasted, woody cup.
- HysonTea types
- An eighteenth and nineteenth-century Chinese green tea grade. In the 1700s the word also meant the drink itself.
- KamairichaTea types
- Pan-fired rather than steamed Japanese green tea, mostly from Kyushu. Closer in method to Chinese green tea.
In 1935: Ukers listed "pan-fired" as "a kind of Japan tea which is steamed and then rolled in iron pans over charcoal fires."
- KonachaTea types
- The fine particles sifted out of sencha and gyokuro production. Strong and cheap, and the tea served in most sushi restaurants.
- KukichaTea types
- Tea made from stems and stalks sorted out of leaf grades. Light, sweet, and low in caffeine.
- MatchaTea types
- Shade-grown Japanese green tea stone-milled to a fine powder, whisked into water and drunk whole rather than steeped and strained.
- MechaTea types
- Buds and small leaf tips separated during sorting. More concentrated than the sencha it came from.
- OolongTea types
- Partially oxidised tea, sitting between green and black. From the Chinese wu-lung, black dragon.
In 1935: Ukers wrote it as "a semi-fermented tea," using the trade's word for what is now understood as enzymatic oxidation, not fermentation.
- Orange PekoeTea types
- A sieve size, nothing more. It describes the dimensions of the leaf that passed through a particular mesh, and says nothing about quality or citrus.
In 1935: Ukers is unusually blunt about it: "a grade of leaf tea resulting from sifting through a sieve having mesh of a certain specified size."
- PekoeTea types
- A black-tea leaf grade, not a flavour or origin. From the Chinese for white hair, after the down on young leaf.
- Pu-erhTea types
- Yunnan tea that is genuinely fermented by microbes, and the one category where the trade's word for oxidation is literally true.
- SenchaTea types
- Japan's everyday steamed green tea, grown in full sun and rolled into needles. The largest share of Japanese tea production.
In 1935: Ukers defined sencha simply as "the ordinary export teas of Japan." In 1935 sencha was what left the country and matcha was not; the order has reversed.
- ShinchaTea types
- The first tea of the year, sold within weeks of plucking. Prized for freshness and sweetness rather than depth.
- SouchongTea types
- A large-leaf black grade. From the Chinese for small kind, originally naming the bush rather than the leaf size.
- TamaryokuchaTea types
- Curled rather than needle-rolled green tea. Skipping the final shaping roll leaves a comma-shaped leaf and a softer cup.
- White teaTea types
- Minimally processed tea, withered and dried without rolling. Named for the silver down on the unopened buds.
- ArachaGrowing & making
- Crude tea, as it leaves the farmer. Still holding stem, dust and irregular leaf, and not yet sorted or finish-fired.
- BlendingGrowing & making
- Combining lots to hit a consistent house profile year after year. Most named matcha is a blend, not a single field.
- Camellia sinensisGrowing & making
- The single species every true tea comes from. Green, black, oolong and white differ by processing, not by plant.
- Cold storageGrowing & making
- Holding tencha and matcha cold and sealed. Light, heat, oxygen and moisture all degrade matcha quickly, and colour is the first thing to go.
- CTCGrowing & making
- Crush, tear, curl. Machinery that reduces leaf to uniform granules for fast, strong brewing. The reason most tea-bag tea tastes the way it does.
- CultivarGrowing & making
- A propagated tea variety with fixed characteristics. Yabukita alone covers roughly three-quarters of Japan's planted area.
- De-stemmingGrowing & making
- Removing stem and vein from tencha before milling. Stem left in the leaf gives a coarser, duller powder.
- FiringGrowing & making
- Drying tea with heat to fix its condition and drive off the last moisture. The final step before a tea is stable enough to ship.
- HarvestGrowing & making
- The plucking round. Japan runs up to four a year, and which one a leaf comes from matters more to quality than almost anything else.
- IchibanchaGrowing & making
- First flush, the year's opening harvest. The most concentrated leaf and the basis of nearly all high-grade matcha.
- IshiusuGrowing & making
- The granite mill that grinds tencha into matcha. It turns slowly enough that output is measured in grams per hour, not kilograms, which is most of why matcha costs what it does.
- NibanchaGrowing & making
- Second flush, plucked roughly six weeks after the first. More astringent, cheaper, and common in culinary grades.
- OrthodoxGrowing & making
- Whole-leaf manufacture by the traditional wither, roll, oxidise, fire sequence, as against the crushing machinery that replaced it for commodity black tea.
- OxidationGrowing & making
- The enzymatic browning that turns green leaf into oolong or black tea. What determines tea type, since all of it comes from one plant.
In 1935: The 1935 trade called this "fermentation" throughout, and Ukers uses that word. No microbes are involved; the term stuck anyway.
- RollingGrowing & making
- Shaping and bruising steamed leaf into needles. Tencha is never rolled, which is why it mills to a clean powder.
- ShadingGrowing & making
- Covering the field for roughly three to four weeks before plucking. Starved of light, the plant holds more amino acids and less astringency.
- ShiageGrowing & making
- The refining stage: sorting, de-stemming, sizing and final firing that turns aracha into a finished tea.
- SiftingGrowing & making
- Passing matcha through a fine mesh before whisking, to break up the clumps that static and storage create.
- SteamingGrowing & making
- The step that stops oxidation within seconds of plucking. Steaming is what makes Japanese green tea taste Japanese; China pan-fires instead.
- TanaGrowing & making
- The traditional shelf-and-straw canopy built over a tea field, as opposed to cloth draped directly on the bushes.
- TenchaGrowing & making
- The shaded, steamed, de-stemmed leaf that matcha is milled from. Tencha is the input; matcha is the product.
In 1935: Ukers recorded tencha as "a powdered Japan tea, known also as Hikicha, or ceremonial tea. It is not an export tea." Both halves have since inverted: tencha is the unground leaf, and it is now the constrained input behind a global shortage.
- Two leaves and a budGrowing & making
- The standard fine plucking: the unopened bud and the two youngest leaves below it. The benchmark for hand-plucked quality worldwide.
- WitheringGrowing & making
- Letting plucked leaf lose moisture before rolling. Central to black tea, deliberately skipped in Japanese green tea.
- YobanchaGrowing & making
- The fourth and final plucking of the season. Coarse leaf, usually destined for bancha.
- ChadoCeremony
- The way of tea. The same practice as chanoyu, framed as a lifelong discipline rather than an occasion.
- ChaireCeremony
- The ceramic caddy used for thick tea, usually kept in a silk pouch. Treated with more formality than the natsume.
- ChajiCeremony
- The full formal gathering: a meal, charcoal, thick tea and thin tea, running four hours or more.
- ChakaiCeremony
- The shorter, lighter tea gathering. Thin tea and a sweet, without the meal.
- ChanoyuCeremony
- The Japanese tea ceremony. Literally hot water for tea, which is a fair description of how plainly it presents itself.
- ChasenCeremony
- The whisk, cut from a single node of bamboo into 80 to 120 tines. It aerates rather than stirs, and it is a consumable, not an heirloom.
- ChashakuCeremony
- The bamboo scoop for measuring matcha. Roughly one gram to the scoop. It measures; it does not sift.
- ChawanCeremony
- The tea bowl. Wide and shallow for summer, deep and narrow for winter, so the tea cools or holds accordingly.
- FukusaCeremony
- The silk cloth used to purify the utensils in front of the guests. The folding of it is itself part of the practice.
- HishakuCeremony
- The bamboo ladle used to move hot water from the kettle to the bowl.
- Ichigo ichieCeremony
- One time, one meeting. The principle that this particular gathering will not recur, so it deserves full attention.
- KaisekiCeremony
- The meal served before thick tea at a full chaji. Light by design, so it prepares the palate rather than filling the guest.
- KamaCeremony
- The iron kettle set over the hearth. Its sound as the water approaches temperature is treated as part of the gathering.
In 1935: Ukers lists the related tetsubin plainly as "Japanese. Tea kettle."
- KoichaCeremony
- Thick tea. Around four grams kneaded into 30ml of water to the consistency of paint, shared from one bowl. It demands the best leaf a house has.
- MizuyaCeremony
- The preparation room behind the tea room, where utensils are washed and readied out of sight.
- NatsumeCeremony
- The lacquered caddy holding matcha for thin tea, named for the jujube fruit its shape recalls.
- NijiriguchiCeremony
- The low crawl-through entrance to a tea room. Everyone stoops, which was the point when samurai and merchants sat together.
- RojiCeremony
- The garden path to the tea room. Walking it is meant to separate the gathering from the day that preceded it.
- TemaeCeremony
- The set sequence of movements for preparing tea. Learned by repetition until the form carries the attention rather than demanding it.
- UsuchaCeremony
- Thin tea. Roughly two grams whisked with 70ml of water to a light foam. What almost everyone means by a bowl of matcha.
- WabiCeremony
- The aesthetic of restraint and imperfection that Sen no Rikyu brought to tea. Plain materials, small rooms, nothing surplus.
- Agony of the leavesTasting
- The unfurling of dried leaf as boiling water hits it. A tasters' phrase, and the most vivid thing the trade ever named.
- AstringencyTasting
- The drying, puckering sensation from catechins binding to proteins in the mouth. A texture, not a taste.
- BodyTasting
- The weight and strength of the liquor in the mouth.
- BoldTasting
- Large leaf particles, a description of the dry leaf rather than the flavour.
- BrightTasting
- Clear and sparkling in the cup, the opposite of dull. A visual judgement that usually predicts a clean flavour.
- BriskTasting
- Live rather than flat. The lift a fresh, well-made tea has and a tired one does not.
- CaffeineTasting
- Present in all tea from Camellia sinensis. Shading raises it, roasting and later harvests lower it, which is why hojicha and bancha sit at the bottom of the range.
In 1935: Ukers records theine as an obsolete name for tea caffeine, already outdated in 1935.
- CatechinTasting
- The polyphenol group behind green tea's astringency. EGCG is the most abundant of them.
- CoarseTasting
- Harsh and rough in the cup, typically from late-harvest or badly sorted leaf.
- FinishTasting
- What remains after swallowing. In good shaded tea it is sweet and lingering rather than drying.
- FlatTasting
- Lacking briskness and pungency. What tea tastes like when it has been stored badly or too long.
- Infused leafTasting
- The wet leaf after brewing, read for colour and evenness. Tasters judge it alongside the cup, since it shows how the tea was made.
- L-theanineTasting
- An amino acid abundant in shaded leaf. It carries much of tea's sweetness and umami, and shading raises it.
- LiquorTasting
- The brewed tea itself, as distinct from the leaf. The trade's standard word, and nothing to do with alcohol.
- PointTasting
- The bright, faintly acidic edge that gives a tea definition. A tea lacking point tastes soft and vague.
- PungentTasting
- Astringent in a good way: a clean drawing sensation, not bitterness.
- RawnessTasting
- A green, bitter edge from under-processed leaf.
- Standing upTasting
- Holding colour and character as the cup cools or as milk goes in. A durability test more than a flavour note.
- StewyTasting
- Soft and dull, lacking point. Usually the result of water held too long off the boil, or leaf steeped too slowly.
- ThickTasting
- Concentrated liquor with real density. In matcha, the quality koicha is judged on.
- ThinTasting
- Liquor lacking colour and body. Usually a sign of under-leafing or exhausted leaf.
- UmamiTasting
- The savoury, brothy taste that shading concentrates in tencha and gyokuro. The quality that separates good matcha from merely green matcha.
- AuctionTrade & history
- The open sale where lots are priced. Japan's tencha auctions each May are the earliest reliable signal of what matcha will cost that year.
- BreakTrade & history
- A lot offered at auction. A large break ran to a thousand chests or more.
- CattyTrade & history
- The Chinese and Malay pound, about 604.8 grams. Still the unit that Chinese tea pricing is quoted in.
- CessTrade & history
- A levy on tea exports funding promotion and research. The mechanism behind the producer-country advertising campaigns of the 1930s.
- Ch'a ChingTrade & history
- Lu Yu's Classic of Tea, around 780, the first book written about tea and the point where tea becomes a subject rather than a commodity.
- ChaTrade & history
- The word for tea across most of Asia and eastern Europe, carried overland. The te that became tea and thee travelled by sea from the Fujian coast instead.
- ChestTrade & history
- The lead-lined wooden box tea shipped in. Chests, half-chests and boxes were the trade's packing sizes, and the reason tea travelled as well as it did.
- ChopTrade & history
- A lot of tea carrying one garden's mark. The unit the nineteenth-century trade actually bought and sold in.
In 1935: From the Hindi chapna, to stamp. Ukers notes the idiom it left behind: something is first-chop when it is of first-rate quality.
- CompradoreTrade & history
- The Chinese agent standing between a foreign firm and local buyers and sellers. From the Portuguese comprar, to buy.
- East India CompanyTrade & history
- The chartered monopoly that controlled British tea importing until 1833, and whose cargo triggered the Boston Tea Party.
- Garden markTrade & history
- The estate's stamp on a chest, identifying who made the tea. The ancestor of every origin claim on a modern tin.
- GodownTrade & history
- A warehouse, in the ports of the Asian tea trade. From the Malay gedong.
- HongTrade & history
- A Chinese merchant house, and the building it occupied. Literally a row of rooms: office, tea room, sample room, firing room, warehouse.
- Hong merchantTrade & history
- One of the licensed Canton merchants who alone could trade with foreigners, and who stood surety to the authorities for their conduct and duties.
In 1935: Ukers dates the end of the monopoly precisely: the Treaty of Nanking, 1842.
- InvoiceTrade & history
- In the old trade, a shipment of tea rather than a bill. Roughly synonymous with a chop.
- PiculTrade & history
- One hundred catties, about 60 kilograms. The bulk unit of the old China trade.
- Single originTrade & history
- Tea traceable to one farm or field rather than blended across lots. Uncommon in matcha, because blending is how houses hold a profile steady.
- TaelTrade & history
- A weight of silver used as money of account in the China trade. Never a minted coin.
- TareTrade & history
- The weight of the packaging, subtracted from gross to get net. A live commercial question when tea shipped in heavy lead-lined chests.
- Tea brokerTrade & history
- The intermediary who negotiates a sale between dealers for a commission from the seller.
In 1935: Ukers records the going rate: about 2 per cent on general business in New York, 1 per cent on invoice business.
- Tea clipperTrade & history
- The fast sailing ships that raced new-season China tea to London. Speed commanded a premium because freshness did.
- Tea tasterTrade & history
- The buyer who grades tea by cup rather than by document. Still the decisive step in most sourcing, ours included.
- AssamRegions
- The northeast Indian state where a native tea variety was found growing wild, breaking China's monopoly on supply.
In 1935: Ukers writes it as "Northeast British India," which dates the entry precisely.
- CeylonRegions
- Sri Lanka, and still the trade name for its tea. It turned to tea in the 1880s after leaf disease destroyed its coffee.
- DarjeelingRegions
- High-elevation Himalayan tea, grown between roughly 750 and 2,000 metres, prized for aroma rather than strength.
- FormosaRegions
- Taiwan, under the name the tea trade used for a century. Its oolongs were the island's signature export.
In 1935: Throughout the 1935 statistics Ukers counts Formosa as a producing country in its own right, listed separately from China.
- FujianRegions
- The southeastern Chinese province that gave the world oolong, white tea, and the word tea itself.
- KagoshimaRegions
- Japan's second tea prefecture, at the southern end of Kyushu. Warm enough to pluck earliest, and the most mechanised growing region.
- KyushuRegions
- Japan's southern main island, holding Kagoshima, Yame, Miyazaki and most of the country's pan-fired tea.
- MakinoharaRegions
- The Shizuoka plateau cleared for tea by unemployed samurai in the 1870s. Now the country's single largest planted area.
- MieRegions
- Japan's third tea prefecture by volume, and a significant producer of both sencha and tencha with little name recognition abroad.
- NaraRegions
- Where tea seed first took hold in Japan, and still a tencha-growing prefecture.
- NishioRegions
- The Aichi city that produces a large share of Japan's tencha, with far less name recognition than Uji.
- ShizuokaRegions
- Japan's largest tea prefecture by volume, and the centre of sencha rather than matcha production.
- UjiRegions
- The Kyoto district where Japanese tea culture concentrated from the 1200s. Small in volume today, still the reference point for matcha.
- WazukaRegions
- A mountain village in the Uji growing area supplying a disproportionate share of Kyoto's high-grade leaf.
- YameRegions
- A Fukuoka district known for gyokuro and for shading with traditional straw canopies.
About the 1935 source
William H. Ukers founded the Tea and Coffee Trade Journal in 1901 and spent three decades assembling All About Tea, published in two volumes in 1935. Volume two closes with a dictionary of the trade's working vocabulary, which is where most of the historical entries here come from.
Citations read Ukers II:511, meaning volume two, printed page 511, so anyone holding a copy can check the line. Ukers is quoted for what the trade meant in 1935, not as a current authority: his statistics stop in 1934, and his chapters on tea and health reflect the science of that decade, so nothing here draws on them.
The clearest example of why the 1935 record is worth keeping is tencha. Ukers defined it as a powdered tea that was not exported. Today tencha is the unground leaf, and it is the constrained input behind a global matcha shortage. Both halves of the definition inverted inside ninety years.