1. A party assembled to take tea together; a social entertainment at which tea is taken.
1778. Miss Burney, Evelina (1791), I. xvi. 61. The arched recesses that are appropriated for tea-parties [at Ranelagh].
1843. Thackeray, Men’s Wives, Mr. & Mrs. Berry, ii. The Reverend Lemuel Whey is a tea-party man.
1851. D. Jerrold, St. Giles, xix. 196. As comfortable as any dowager at a tea-party.
2. transf. (colloq. or slang.) a. Boston tea-party, a humorous name for the revolutionary proceeding in 1773, when the tea was thrown overboard from the ships in Boston harbor as a protest against the taxation of the American colonies by the British Government. b. A lively proceeding, a disturbance.
1864. Webster App., Names Fiction, Boston Tea-party.
1874. O. W. Holmes, Ballad of Boston Tea-party, 28. The storm broke loose, but first of all The Boston teapot bubbled!
1903. Westm. Gaz., 20 Jan., 9/2. An electrician’s ‘tea-party’ is brought about by a short circuit…. In particularly bad cases … explosions of the circuit breakers occur, and showers of molten copper, which often start fires, render the ‘tea-party’ of the liveliest description.
