dabao
English
Etymology
From Cantonese 打包 (daa2 baau1, “to pack and unpack”).
Pronunciation
- (Singapore) IPA(key): /ˈtaːpaʊ/
Verb
dabao (third-person singular simple present dabaos, present participle dabaoing, simple past and past participle dabaoed)
- Alternative form of tapao
- 1999 September 27, sg.jobs.offer, Usenet:
- Moreover, they don't go for lunch but "Da Bao" and keep working during lunch break.
- 2008 July 30, Heng, Joseph, “pre-departure food outing (yay!)”, in Hopkins4U, retrieved 2018-10-28:
- xiaoyang: though one thing - can we move the place to bedok instead? all the famous hawker food in katong kind of close at night, but bedok block 85 bak chor mee + sambal stingray + orh luah + aboling only open at night. anyone strongly objects to that? Joseph Heng: tapao something for me?
- 2013 June 4, NY5 2013, Usenet:
- This isn't meant to shame people, just to kind of remind them (and the audience) that sometimes, little things like take-aways from the canteen aren't always necessary, and that by not da-baoing for a change, we can make a positive contribution to the environment (decreasing the demand for logging/deforestation for paper!).
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Usage notes
Common in spoken and written colloquial Singapore English (Singlish); uncommon in formal speech or discourse.