the.com/bubble tea

means A cold or hot tea drink, often mixed with milk and sweeteners, served with chewy tapioca pearls (or other jelly-like add-ins) sucked up through an extra-wide straw.

from Born in Taiwan in the 1980s, the drink's English name most likely points to the frothy 'bubble' layer shaken or stirred up on top of the tea — not the pearls, as many assume. The pearls themselves come from boba, a Taiwanese slang term (possibly linked to a Cantonese word for a large-bosomed cartoon character, by one popular but unverified story) that became the drink's other common nickname. Exactly which shop invented it first is still debated, but the wide straw was a necessity from day one — ordinary straws simply couldn't handle the pearls.