tapao

English

Alternative forms

• dabao, tapau, tapow

Etymology

Borrowed from Cantonese 打包 (daa² baau¹, “to pack”).

Pronunciation

• (Singapore) IPA^(key): [ˌtɑ(ː)˧ˈpaʊ]

Verb

tapao (usually invariable)

1. (Manglish, Singlish, transitive, intransitive) To order (food) as takeaway; to pack food so it can be consumed elsewhere.
   • 2012 September 4, Wilfred Pilo, “Kolo-mee the signature dish of Kuching”, in The Borneo Post‎^[1], Kuching, Malaysia, →OCLC, archived from the original on 19 Sept 2014:

     Recently, my friend ‘tapao’ (packed) 20 packets of kolo mee before she flew back to Kuala Lumpur.

   • 2015 September 5, Rachel Loi, quoting Stephan Zoisl, “Fine dining made easy”, in The Business Times‎^[2], Singapore, →OCLC, archived from the original on 1 January 2017:

     "People don't want to go eat out every day, and whenever you tapao home it's usually from a hawker centre.

   • 2017 January 28, Rachel Loi, quoting Yong Bing Ngen, “Simple Fare”, in The Business Times‎^[3], Singapore, →OCLC, archived from the original on 23 February 2019:

     "My celebration begins after 11pm on the eve of CNY. After service, I tapao some yu sheng and pen cai, and try to get home before midnight.

   • 2017 November 17, Amresh S. Jessy, “We Try To Find Out Why The Food Delivery Service In Malaysia Is So Horrible”, in Rojak Daily‎^[4], Malaysia, archived from the original on 30 April 2018:

     “Why does it happen?”, […] and “What the Hell should I eat now?!” were some of the questions we pondered on while driving ourselves to the nearest restaurant to (physically) tapao our food… in the rain… while it was all jammed up.

Anagrams

• Opata, Patao

Spanish

Noun

tapao m (plural tapaos)

1. a type of stew, usually with fish