The Origins of Tea and Chi

English borrowed the word snuff from dutch to refer to powdered tobacco. When tob o made its way to england, people didn't just sniff it - they also smoked it. Around this same time in the early 15 sixties western europeans started to be introduced to tea from east asia. A portuguese priest named gaspar de cruz wrote the first detailed description of tea drinking based on what he observed there. They used the mandarin chinese word for the plant and the drink, which was cha. That's actually how the word was first recorded in english in the late 15 hundreds.