Other forms: tapes
Tape is the sticky strip on a roll used to fasten paper and parcels. A roll of tape, stick it with tape, parcel tape.
The kinds are named by job: sticky tape, masking tape, parcel tape, duct tape, electrical tape. In Britain, Sellotape is a trade mark used generically. Tape also means magnetic recording tape and, by extension, a recording: on tape, the tapes were released. A tape measure is the flexible one. Note red tape, meaning bureaucracy; and breast the tape, meaning to win a race.
1nountapeA sticky strip on a roll used for fastening.
“She wrapped the present and held the paper down with a bit of tape.”
synonyms: sticky tape, sellotape
2nounrecordingA recording, or magnetic recording strip.
“The whole conversation is on tape and nobody has heard it.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
tape is a strip.
Also accepted in games: sticky tape, sellotape
Old English taeppe meant a narrow strip of cloth, and every later sense is a strip of something — cloth, magnetic film or adhesive plastic. The word has named the shape rather than the material for a thousand years.
Middle English
tape
English, today
tape
Built from
From Middle English 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”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA