All the Tea in China (1855)

[Imran Ghory]

On Tue, 13 May 2003 Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

> FOR ALL THE TEA IN CHINA
>
>    OED has "all the tea in China" from Eric Partridge's slang dictionary (1937).  Dictionaries never coin words.  Partridge says it's Australian.

The phrase "all the tea in China" predate "for all the tea in China", the
first being used in Sir Walter Scott's Waverly Novels,

(p.128 in the 1855 edition)
"Martha, the old housekeeper, partook of the taste of the family at the
Hall. A toast and tankard would have pleased her better than all the tea
in China."

(Given that Walter Scott died in 1832, the origin almost certainly predate
1855 by a few decades.)


Imran Ghory
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran