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bao toh

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Singapore[ˌp˭aʊ˨ ˈt˭o˦]

bao toh verb: to inform on someone behind his or her back.

Verb

bao toh (invariable)

  1. (Singapore, Singlish, informal, invariable) To inform on someone behind his or her back.
    • Eh butok lah! Which bastard paotoh to teacher that I carry handphone to school? Now kena confiscate!2003 September 1, “pao toh”, in Talkingcock.com, retrieved 02 Nov 2015
    • I saw Gary looking at his textbook during the test. Wanna bao toh him?2011, Jonathan Heng, “Bao Toh, v.”, in Singslang.blogspot.sg, retrieved 02 Nov 2015

Forms of bao toh

alternative formpao toh

Origin of bao toh

From Hokkien 包刀 (pau to, literally “wrapped knife”), referring to backstabbing.

Questions about bao toh

What does bao toh mean?
Bao toh means to inform on someone behind his or her back.
What part of speech is bao toh?
Bao toh is a verb.
How do you pronounce bao toh?
Bao toh is pronounced [ˌp˭aʊ˨ ˈt˭o˦] (Singapore).

Words near bao toh in the dictionary

  1. BANZSL
  2. banzuke
  3. bao
  4. bao bun
  5. bao buns
  6. bao toh
  7. Bao'an
  8. Bao-angan
  9. baobab
  10. baobabs
  11. Baobaoan

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bao toh (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “bao toh.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bao_toh. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.