“Chai Tea” and the Perils of Words

Several times recently, I’ve seen social media users post variations on “You mustn’t say ‘chai tea,’ because chai means tea , so ‘chai tea’ means ‘tea tea.’” These posts aren’t verbatim, so they presumably aren’t copypasta; but they repeat the same message, that “chai tea” is a tautology. I take the poster’s point. But I think this misses something important about how language evolves, and how…