Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
n. (alternative form of teacup English)
Usage examples of "tea-cup".
CHAPTER IX In Which It Appears That a Senator Is But a Man The light of the cheerful fire shone on the rug and carpet of a cosey parlor, and glittered on the sides of the tea-cups and well-brightened tea-pot, as Senator Bird was drawing off his boots, preparatory to inserting his feet in a pair of new handsome slippers, which his wife had been working for him while away on his senatorial tour.
But when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup.
Carnaby Street in the 1960s, dropping ashes from a spliff onto the priceless Pucci tunic, sipping electric Kool-Aid from a gold-rimmed Limoges tea-cup.
Here the goods included the coarse woollen cloth made in most Tibetan households, squares of silk from China, cheap printed material from India, maize and rice from Bhutan, spices, the usual home-grown vegetables, tea-bricks, ritual objects, coral, amber and agate necklaces, talisman boxes and tea-cups of polished birch and maple.
Laura and her two cousins, with their little tea-cups in their hands, all laughing and talking like sisters, while George held up some absurd photographs of a stout, round-faced little girl, with a strongly--curved mouth, which he declared to be portraits of Sara in her early youth, Louey felt that her world contained all she could desire, or nearly all, for Louey had not forgotten that a wonderful thing was to happen the same evening, which would make her happiness altogether complete.
The very tea-cups and the old silver was a bond between Hermione and Birkin.
There were usually, by seven o'clock, whiskey-and-soda glasses and tea-cups on most of the furniture, and half-smoked cigarets on everything that would hold them, including the piano.
The housekeeper's little skivvy, that she keeps to fetch, carry and lick boot, just topping the tea-cup up with old Jamaica, all hell breaks loose below stairs as if a Chinese orchestra started up its woodblocks and xylophones, crash, wallop.