Making Tea
"I suppose it's not very British to say it, but steeping tea is kind of odd," Eustace said absently, keeping his gaze on brown liquid with its light steam, rather than on his soggy porridge. His companion didn't reply, so he went on. "Almost any other time one submerges something in water, the point is for the water to soak through the something-or-other. But when one puts a tea bag in water, the whole point is for the tea bag to soak through the water, rather than the other way round." He frowned thoughtfully. "Can one soak water?"
Jill looked up, very slowly, from the other side of the table. "Eustace," she replied flatly. "Not before breakfast."
A/N: I have been working in the new library I found for four and a half hours now (I am so close to finishing my nonfiction book), and I needed a break, so I looked up where the verb in "steep the tea" came from, and found: "'to soak in a liquid,' early 14c., of uncertain origin, originally in reference to barley or malt, probably cognate with Old Norse steypa "to pour out, throw" (perhaps from an unrecorded Old English cognate), from Proto-Germanic *staupijanan," and, well, this was born.