Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A grade of black tea consisting of the leaves around the buds.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Pekoe tea (unqualified) is that made from the three pekoe leaves together (see below). It is of a black or grayish black color dotted with grayish or yellowish pekoe ends, and yields a strong dark liquor of fine flavor, technically described as “piquant.”
  • noun A superior kind of black tea, so called because the leaves are picked young with the “down” still on them.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A kind of black tea.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A high-quality black tea made using young leaves, grown in Sri Lanka, India and Java.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a superior grade of black tea; grown in India and Sri Lanka and Java

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Amoy pe’h hô (literally, white down, probably in reference to the whitish hairs on the young leaves ) : pe’h, white (akin to Mandarin bái, from Middle Chinese pɦaʽjk) + , fine hair, down (akin to Mandarin háo, long fine hair, from Middle Chinese xɦaw).]

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