Word.ws English Dictionary

shoyu-tai

shoyu-tai noun: a single-use plastic soy sauce recipient in the format of a fish.

shoyu-tai: a single-use plastic soy sauce recipient in the format of a fish
Image: Paul Joseph, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

shoyu-tai (plural shoyu-tai)

  1. A single-use plastic soy sauce recipient in the format of a fish.
    • South Australia is set to become the first place on Earth to ban the iconic plastic soy sauce fish, known in Japan as shoyu-tai or the “soy-sauce snapper.” Invented in 1954 by Teruo Watanabe, these adorable polyethylene soy sauce dispensers were initially dubbed the “Lunch Charm.”2025 September 3, Luis Prada, “Why Those Adorable Fish-Shaped Soy Sauce Packets Are Now Banned in Australia”, in Vice, United States, archived from the original on 03 Sep 2025
    • If you’ve ever indulged in takeaway or delivery sushi, you may be familiar with shoyu-tai, a tiny, fish-shaped plastic container created in Japan and now widely popular. These single-use bottles that often only contain a few drops of soy sauce have a less-cute destiny, contributing to the plastic...2024 August 13, Laura Botham, “5 products with wondrously unexpected designs”, in IIDA, United States, archived from the original on 03 Sep 2025

Examples of shoyu-tai in a sentence

  • If you’ve ever indulged in takeaway or delivery sushi, you may be familiar with shoyu-tai, a tiny, fish-shaped plastic container created in Japan and now widely popular.2024 August 13, Laura Botham, “5 products with wondrously unexpected designs”, in IIDA, United States, archived from the original on 03 Sep...
  • Launched in the 1950s, the single-use soy packets shaped like a fish – and called “shoyu-tai” in Japanese – were invented to replace glass or ceramic soy bottles.2021 March 12, Kaycee Enerva, “These cute fish lamps are raising awareness of single-use soy packets”, in Viable Earth, United States...

Forms of shoyu-tai

pluralshoyu-tai

Origin of shoyu-tai

Borrowed from Japanese 醤油鯛 (shoyu-tai, “soy sauce bream”).

Questions about shoyu-tai

What does shoyu-tai mean?
Shoyu-tai means a single-use plastic soy sauce recipient in the format of a fish.
How do you use shoyu-tai in a sentence?
If you’ve ever indulged in takeaway or delivery sushi, you may be familiar with shoyu-tai, a tiny, fish-shaped plastic container created in Japan and now widely popular.
What part of speech is shoyu-tai?
Shoyu-tai is a noun.
What is the plural of shoyu-tai?
The plural of shoyu-tai is shoyu-tai.

Words near shoyu-tai in the dictionary

  1. showyard
  2. showyards
  3. showyness
  4. shox
  5. shoyu
  6. shoyu-tai
  7. shoyus
  8. shozoku
  9. SHP
  10. shpadoinkle
  11. Shpanberg

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shoyu-tai (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: “shoyu-tai.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shoyu-tai. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.