iso standard cup of tea

1 definition found

iso standard cup of tea - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :

  ISO standard cup of tea
   n.
  
     [South Africa] A cup of tea with milk and one teaspoon of sugar,
  where
     the milk is poured into the cup before the tea. Variations are ISO 0,
     with no sugar; ISO 2, with two spoons of sugar; and so on.
  
     This may derive from the "NATO standard" cup of coffee and tea (milk
     and two sugars), military slang going back to the late 1950s and
     parodying NATO's relentless bureaucratic drive to standardize parts
     across European and U.S. militaries.
  
     Like many ISO standards, this one has a faintly alien ring in North
     America, where hackers generally shun the decadent British practice
  of
     adulterating perfectly good tea with dairy products and prefer
  instead
     to add a wedge of lemon, if anything. If one were feeling extremely
     silly, one might hypothesize an analogous ANSI standard cup of tea
  and
     wind up with a political situation distressingly similar to several
     that arise in much more serious technical contexts. (Milk and lemon
     don't mix very well.)
  
     [2000 update: There is now, in fact, an ISO standard 3103: `Method
  for
     preparation of a liquor of tea for use in sensory tests.', alleged to
     be equivalent to British Standard BS6008: How to make a standard cup
     of tea. --ESR]