Word.ws English Dictionary

tape

UK/teɪ̯p/

tape noun: flexible material in a roll with a sticky surface on one or both sides; adhesive tape. Also the clipping of red tape.

tape: flexible material in a roll with a sticky surface on one or both sides; adhesive tape
Image: Toby Hudson, CC BY-SA 2.5 au, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

tape (countable and uncountable, plural tapes)

  1. Flexible material in a roll with a sticky surface on one or both sides; adhesive tape.
    • Hand me some tape. I need to fix a tear in this paper.
    • I sealed up the box with clear shipping tape.
  2. Thin and flat paper, plastic or similar flexible material, usually produced in the form of a roll.
    • We made some decorative flowers out of the tape we bought.
  3. Finishing tape, stretched across a track to mark the end of a race.
    • Jones broke the tape in 47.77 seconds, a new world record.
  4. Magnetic or optical recording media in a roll; videotape or audio tape.
    • Did you get that on tape?
    • So we went around the corner, looked in the garbage, and, boom, there's about 16 of the tapes he didn't like!1993, Vibe, volume 1, number 2
  5. (broadly, informal) Any video or audio recording, regardless of the method used to produce it.
    • “It was one of the most severe beatings they’ve seen on tape,” an FDNY insider said, recalling the reaction by brass who viewed video of the bloody fisticuffs.2018 August 18, Susan Edelman, New York Post
  6. (informal) An unthinking, patterned response triggered by a particular stimulus.
    • Old couples will sometimes play tapes at each other during a fight.
  7. The series of prices at which a financial instrument trades.
    • Don’t fight the tape.
  8. The wrapping of the primary puck-handling surface of a hockey stick.
    • His pass was right on the tape.
  9. (historical) A strong flexible band rotating on pulleys for directing the sheets in a printing machine.
  10. (UK, obsolete, slang, possible) Liquor, alcoholic drink, especially gin or brandy. (Especially in prison slang or among domestic servants and women.)
    • white tape, Holland tape, blue tape (gin); red tape (brandy or wine)
    • Madam Gin has been christened by as many names as a German princess : every petty chandler's shop will sell you Sky-blue, and every night-cellar furnish you with Holland tape, three yards a penny. Nor can I see the difference […]1827 (originally 1755?), Connoisseur, page=223

Verb

tape (third-person singular simple present tapes, present participle taping, simple past and past participle taped)

  1. To bind with adhesive tape.
    • Be sure to tape your parcel securely before posting it.
    • The agent had to dead-drop the locker key to the PGU by some simple means, such as by taping it underneath a predesignated park bench, where it could be retrieved unobtrusively, usually by an officer under illegal cover.2007, Ion Mihai Pacepa, Programmed to Kill
  2. To record, originally onto magnetic tape.
    • You shouldn’t have said that. The microphone was on and we were taping.
    • The warmup guy — as I now know is common for live audiences in taped television performances — kept fluffing the crowd like they were preschoolers.
      “Now what are you going to do when we introduce the first comedian?”
      Wild cheers.
      “C'mon, that's not good enough! Let's try it again! What are you...2016, Doug Stanhope, Digging Up Mother
  3. (informal, passive voice) To understand, figure out.
    • I've finally got this thing taped.

Proper noun capitalized: Tape

Tape

  1. a nearly extinct language spoken on Vanuatu

Also used as

tape is also the clipping of red tape.

tape meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

tape in Hindi

video or audiocassette tape
टेप ṭep

tape in Tamil

நாடா, டேப்

tape in Marathi

video or audiocassette tape
टेप ṭep

tape in Urdu

video or audiocassette tape
ٹیپ ṭep
More languagesFewer languages
tape in Bengali
টেপ ṭep
tape in Telugu
టేప్, టేపు, టేప్ చేయడానికి
tape in Malayalam
ടേപ്പ്, ടേപ്, ടേപ്പ് ചെയ്യാൻ
tape in Kannada
ಟೇಪ್, ಟೇಪು, ಟೇಪ್ ಮಾಡಲು
tape in Punjabi
ਟੇਪ
tape in Odia
ଟେପ୍, ଟେପ୍ |
tape in Nepali
टेप, टेप गर्न
tape in Tagalog
teyp
tape in Arabic
شَرِيط šarīṭ
tape in Malay
pita
tape in Thai
เทป téep
tape in Vietnamese
băng, băng từ, dán, dính
tape in Myanmar
တိပ်ခွေ tiphkwe

Examples of tape in a sentence

  • The VHS recorder just ate the tape and won't spit it out.
  • If you can't fix it with duck tape, it's not worth fixing.
  • I used duct tape to cover the hole in a leaky pipe.

All 40 example sentences with tape

Forms of tape

Noun
pluraltapes
Verb
third-person singular presenttapes
present participletaping
past participletaped
pasttaped

Past tense of tape: taped

Plural of tape: tapes

Origin of tape

From Middle English tape, tappe, from Old English tæppa, tæppe (“ribbon, tape”); further origin unclear. Probably akin to Old Frisian tapia (“to pull, rip, tear”), Middle Low German tappen, tāpen (“to grab, pull, rip, tear, snatch”), Middle High German zāfen, zāven (“to pull, tear”).

Words formed from tape

Phrases with tape

94 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with tape

21 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about tape

What does tape mean?
Tape means flexible material in a roll with a sticky surface on one or both sides; adhesive tape.
What is tape in Hindi?
Tape in Hindi is टेप (ṭep). See Tape meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is tape?
Tape can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce tape?
Tape is pronounced /teɪ̯p/ (UK).
What is the plural of tape?
The plural of tape is tapes.

Words near tape in the dictionary

  1. tapdanced
  2. tapdancer
  3. tapdancers
  4. tapdances
  5. tapdancing
  6. tape
  7. tape ball
  8. tape balls
  9. tape deck
  10. tape decks
  11. tape delay

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tape (page history and authors); Tape (page history and authors); tape (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tape (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tape (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tape (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tape (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tape (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tape (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-tape.ogg.

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