tea party

Meanings

1. A semi-formal afternoon social gathering at which tea, sandwiches and cakes are served.
2. A type of imaginative playing in which children gather with each other or their dolls to mimic having a real tea party or other formal meal, often without any food at all.
3. An interaction characterized by a high degree of courtesy, delicacy, deference, and avoidance of conflict.

1. Any of various independent, fiscally conservative political groups in the twenty-first-century United States.

1. Various independent, fiscally conservative political groups in the twenty-first-century United States, taken as a whole.

Etymology

In reference to the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when American colonists dumped tea into Boston Harbor to protest taxation without representation.