Link Centre Dictionary

tatouay

ta·touay

uncommon

noun

Origin

From a compound word in a Tupi-Guarani language (compare tatu-ai), of which the first element is ultimately from Old Tupi tatu (“armadillo”). Compare Portuguese tatu, French tatou. The second element (ay or ai) may mean "wound" because of a belief that its fat was used on wounds, or "colored", or "worthless".

Related words

Broader terms

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.