Word.ws English Dictionary

dao

/daʊ/

dao noun: any of various traditional Chinese swords with a curved, single-edged blade, primarily used for slashing and chopping. Also the alternative form of Tao.

dao: any of various traditional Chinese swords with a curved, single-edged blade, primarily used for...
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Noun (1)

dao (plural daos)

  1. Any of various traditional Chinese swords with a curved, single-edged blade, primarily used for slashing and chopping.

Noun (2)

dao (usually uncountable, plural daos)

  1. (historical, usually) Synonym of circuit: various administrative divisions of imperial and early Republican China.
    Synonyms:
    circuit

Noun (3)

dao (plural daos)

  1. A sword and construction tool of the Naga people of India, which has a wooden hilt and grows wider from the narrow hilt to the wide, flat tip.

Noun (4)

dao (plural daos)

  1. Dracontomelon dao; a large tree of the family Anacardiaceae; the argus pheasant tree.
  2. The hard strong wood of the dao used for veneers and cabinetwork.

Noun (5) capitalized: DAO

DAO (countable and uncountable, plural DAOs)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of de-asphalted oil, a crude oil refinery process stream.
  2. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of disk-at-once, an optical disk recording mode.
  3. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of data access object, a design pattern.
  4. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of double action only, a trigger mechanism for revolving cylinder and semi-automatic firearms.
  5. (abbreviation, acronym, Web3) Acronym of decentralized autonomous organization, an autonomous entity based on smart contracts on a blockchain.
    • As the name suggests, DAOs are autonomous entities that subsist independently from any legal or moral entity. After they have been created and deployed onto the internet, they no longer need (nor heed) their creators.2014 March 8, Primavera De Filippi, “Tomorrow's Apps Will Come From Brilliant (And Risky) Bitcoin Code”, in Wired, →ISSN
    • Humans aren't in charge, they are on the edges. AI is what makes the decisions and the DAO maintains itself. DAOs aren't just defined by having AI make all the decisions, they also have their own internal capital.2016, Siraj Raval, Decentralized Applications, O'Reilly Media, →ISBN

Proper noun (1) capitalized: DAO

DAO

  1. (abbreviation, initialism, slang) Initialism of Dragon Age: Origins.
    Synonyms:
    DA1

Noun (6) capitalized: DAo

DAo

  1. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of descending aorta.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Dao

Dao

  1. (Chinese, alternative) Alternative form of Tao (“the way of nature, or ideal way to live one's life”).

Also used as

dao is also the alternative form of Tao.

dao is also the alternative form of dah.

dao meaning in Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada

dao in Telugu

డావో

dao in Malayalam

ഡാവോ

dao in Kannada

ಡಾವೋ

Synonyms of dao

Forms of dao

pluraldaos
pluralDAOs

Plural of dao: daos

Origin of dao

From Chinese 刀 (dāo, literally “single-edged blade”). Possibly a doublet of dah.

From the pinyin romanization of Chinese 道 (Dào, literally “the Way”) or (dào, "circuit").

Likely related to one of the preceding words ("Chinese sword", "Burmese knife") or from Indo-Aryan. Compare Bengali দাও (daō).

Phrases with dao

Words that rhyme with dao

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about dao

What does dao mean?
Dao means any of various traditional Chinese swords with a curved, single-edged blade, primarily used for slashing and chopping.
What is dao in Telugu?
Dao in Telugu is డావో. See Dao meaning in Telugu.
What part of speech is dao?
Dao can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce dao?
Dao is pronounced /daʊ/.
What is the plural of dao?
The plural of dao is daos.

Words near dao in the dictionary

  1. danzonete
  2. danzonetes
  3. Danzy
  4. Danzys
  5. danzón
  6. dao
  7. Dao De Jing
  8. Daocheng
  9. Daodejing
  10. Daoguang
  11. Daoism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dao (page history and authors); DAO (page history and authors); DAo (page history and authors); Dao (page history and authors); dao (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dao (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dao (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

Last updated:

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