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Plenty of teas aren't even made of leaves.
Yeah, like coffee.
It's just bean-tea.
If coffee is a tea then I'm going to demand the pasta tea not be poured down the drain
Apparently tea made of leaves and fruits from coffee plants is a thing.
Oooh the cherry leaf tea sounds good! They both do but the regular coffee leaf tastes like green tea so I'm not as curious
Ok, good, I'm not the only one whose had that shower thought
Then it's not tea, it's an infusion or decoction.
Tea is made from a specific plant, the tea shrub (Camellia sinensis).
These infusions might be called tea, but they are tea in the same way as a hotdog is a heated companionable mammal.
Asian cultures called various hot beverages tea 茶 before some Westerner decided that they are wrong. Sure there is green tea from that plant but Asian cultures also had mint or chrysanthemum tea using the same 茶 character (pudina chai in India for mint tea).
If anything, the Westerner who decided that beverages made from only that specific shrub is called tea was the wrong one. Broader uses predate your definition.
Thanks for correcting me then
Non-tea teas are usually referred to as tisanes by those who care enough to make a distinction between the two
Technically, these are all decoctions, and "decoction of tea (the plant)" has become just "tea", which is now colloquially replaced "decoction".
So in the sense I was using tea, as a replacement for "decoction", coffee is a "tea", insofar that the replaced word, "decoction", boiled plant matter drink.
Language isn't quite as black as white as we'd sometimes wish it was.
So you're not wrong, per se, but neither am I.