Meanings
- SingaporealternativeinvariableusuallyAlternative form of tapao.
Moreover, they don't go for lunch but "Da Bao" and keep working during lunch break.
1999 September 27, sg.jobs.offer (Usenet)2 more examples
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?
2008 July 30, Joseph Heng, “pre-departure food outing (yay!)”, in Hopkins4U, retrieved 28 Oct 2018This 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!).
2013 June 4, NY5 2013 (Usenet)
Origin
From Chinese Mandarin 打包 (daa3 baau1, “to pack and unpack”).
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
dabao. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dabao
“dabao.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dabao. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “dabao,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dabao.
Source: dabao on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.