iso standard cup of tea

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]