Word.ws English Dictionary

tai

/taɪ/

tai noun: a fish, the Japanese bream.

Noun (1)

tai

  1. A fish, the Japanese bream.

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Tai

Tai

  1. A local government area of Rivers State, Nigeria.
  2. A female given name from Chinese.
  3. A branch of the Tai-Kadai language family, including Thai, Lao, Shan, and Zhuang.

Noun (2) capitalized: Tai

Tai (plural Tais or Tai)

  1. A descendant of speakers of a common proto-Tai language, including subpopulations which no longer speak a Tai language.
    • The Tais first appeared in history in Yunnan, and from thence they migrated into Upper Burma. The earliest swarms appear to have entered that tract about two thousand years ago, and were small in number.1901, Census of India

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Tai

Tai

  1. (historical) An ancient city and former polity under the Xia dynasty in present-day Wugong, Xianyang, Shaanxi, China.
    • The first ancestor of Zhou tribe was Hou Ji who originally lived in Tai (today's Wugong of Shaanxi), and duke of Liu, his successor, moved to Bin (today's Bin county of Shaanxi), and then passed down to the lord of Dan.[…]
    • Qi later settled down in Tai (southwest of Wugong county of today's Shaanxi), which was located the center of the fertile land of Weibei Plain.[…]
    • The poem Duke Liu, which only has 6 sections and 234 Chinese characters in total, vividly narrates duke Liu's moving from Tai (today's Wugong county, Shaanxi province) to Bin (today's Binxian county, Shaanxi province) and big events regarding him in a very organized structure.2016, M. Yong et al., “Originating Period of Tourism Culture”, in The General History of Chinese Tourism Culture, →OCLC, archived from the original on 21 Jul 2023, pages 11, 26, 27
  2. A surname from Chinese.

Proper noun (3) capitalized: Tai

Tai

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of Dai.
    • Five short stories concern land reform, elections in the border region, and anti-Japanese activities:[...]
      e) “Feng-pao Tai-hsien-chʻeng” 風暴代縣城 (Storms in Tai County). A twenty-year-old anti-Japanese hero does not surrender even when he is captured and executed.1979, Meishi Tsai, Contemporary Chinese Novels and Short Stories, 1949–1974: An Annotated Bibliography, Harvard University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 142
    • Kuang-wu 廣武 lay in the southwestern part of today's Tai County 代縣, Shansi; Wu and Lu, 93.3392n.1994 [145–86 BCE], Ssu-ma Ch’ien, edited by William Nienhauser, The Grand Scribe's Records, Indiana University Press, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 114

Proper noun (4) capitalized: Tai

Tai

  1. A surname.
    • The company on Nov. 3 last year asked an employee surnamed Tai (戴) to deliver 10 barrels of silane — a flammable alkaline substance — from Pingtung County’s Chaojhou Township (潮州) to Sinyuan Township (新園) without telling him what the cargo would be, Tseng said at a news conference on behalf of Tai...2017 November 7, Lin Chia-nan, “Kerry logistics accused of work-related injury cover-up”, in Taipei Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 06 Nov 2017, Taiwan News, page 3
    • Katherine Tai, President Biden’s pick for United States trade representative, promised lawmakers during her confirmation hearing on Thursday that she would work with Congress to help reinvigorate the economy and aggressively enforce American trade rules against China, Mexico and other trading...
    • Ms. Tai, in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, said her background challenging China’s unfair trade practices in the Obama administration had given her knowledge of “the opportunities and limitations in our existing toolbox.”2021 February 25, Ana Swanson, “Biden’s Pick for Trade Representative Promises Break With Past Policy”, in The New York Times, sourced from Washington, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 28...

Noun (3) capitalized: TAI

TAI

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of trifluoromethylaminoindane.
  2. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of technical analysis indicator.

Proper noun (5) capitalized: TAI

TAI

  1. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of Frenchtemps atomique international (“International Atomic Time”), a high-precision atomic coordinate time standard.
  2. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Toshiba America, Inc..
  3. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Turkish Aerospace Industries.
  4. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Thai Airways International.
  5. (abbreviation, historical, initialism) Initialism of Transports Aériens Intercontinentaux, a now defunct French airline.

tai meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Telugu

tai in Hindi

ताई

tai in Marathi

ताई, ताय

tai in Urdu

تائی

tai in Telugu

తాయ్, తై
More languagesFewer languages
tai in Kannada
ತೈ
tai in Punjabi
ਤਾਈ
tai in Gujarati
તાઈ
tai in Odia
ତାଈ
tai in Nepali
ताई

Examples of tai in a sentence

  • Tai purchased purple flowers in a wabi-sabi pot for Tara.
  • TAI: One time I was using some clippers to trim downstairs and I totally caught my labia.
  • The karate school where she took tai chi was in a strip mall near the Three Rivers depot.

All 12 example sentences with tai

Forms of tai

pluralTais
pluralTai

Origin of tai

From Japanese 鯛 (たい, tai).

From the Hanyu Pinyin romanization of the Mandarin pronunciation of Chinese 邰 (Tái) and 斄 /𭤎 (Tái).

From the Wade–Giles romanization of the Mandarin pronunciation of Chinese 代 (dài).

Words formed from tai

Phrases with tai

15 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with tai

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about tai

What does tai mean?
Tai means a fish, the Japanese bream.
What is tai in Hindi?
Tai in Hindi is ताई. See Tai meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is tai?
Tai can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce tai?
Tai is pronounced /taɪ/.
What is the plural of tai?
The plural of tai is Tais.

Words near tai in the dictionary

  1. Tahsing
  2. tahtib
  3. Tahu
  4. tahua
  5. tahure
  6. tai
  7. tai chi
  8. tai chi chuan
  9. tai chi chuans
  10. tai chis
  11. Tai Dam

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tai (page history and authors); Tai (page history and authors); TAI (page history and authors); tai (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tai (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tai (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tai (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tai (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tai (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tai (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tai (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tai (Nepali, 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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-tie.ogg, en-au-tie.ogg.

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