So, during the Japanese tea ceremony do they drink the tea out of teacups? I don't think so.
As to Wikipedia, it's funny how they provide two images, one with a handle and one without. The one with a handle is called a "teacup". The one without a handle is called a "tea bowl" :-P
I am not sure why should I grant any authority to Anna Wierzbicka's opinion.
By the way, Wiktionary defines a teacup as "A small cup, with a handle, used for drinking tea".
The main point is that English is quite diverse. Not every language user uses it the same way. The British used to put a lot of value into drinking tea. The Americans generally don't but these days physicalism is quite prominent so it's reasonable when the meaning changes. What used to be about the purpose of the item became a word about whehter or it has a handle.
I'm working on a conlang (constructed language) and would like some input from the Less Wrong community. One of the goals is to investigate the old Sapir-Whorf hypothesis regarding language affecting cognition. Does anyone here have any ideas regarding linguistic mechanisms that would encourage more rational thinking, apart from those that are present in the oft-discussed conlangs e-prime, loglan, and its offshoot lojban? Or perhaps mechanisms that are used in one of those conlangs, but might be buried too deeply for a person such as myself, who only has superficial knowledge about them, to have recognized? Any input is welcomed, from other conlangs to crazy ideas.