1620 R. Cocks Let. 10 Mar. in Diary (1883) II. 311 Dried fish lyke a breame, called heare tay, in aboundance.

1727 J. G. Scheuchzer tr. E. Kæmpfer Hist. Japan I. i. 135 Tai, is what the Dutch in the Indies call Steenbrassem. This is very much esteem'd by the Japanese as the King of Fish.

1795 C. R. Hopson tr. C. P. Thunberg Trav. IV. 39 Among their valuable fishes is what they call the tay.

1884 tr. J. J. Rein Japan: Trav. & Res. i. vii. 192 The Tai proper is a beautiful deep-red to brown-red gold-bream.

1920 Japan Advertiser 22 Aug. 5 Sashimi or arai..is raw tai, tunny or kare, served with horseradish.

1931 Hardy's Angler's Guide 54 The principal fish [in Hong Kong] is the brown rock-cod,..with the ‘tai’..a good second.

1965 W. Swaan Japanese Lantern iii. 41 The deep red and rather bloody-looking tai (a type of sea bream).

1693 A. Pitfield tr. S. de la Loubère New Hist. Relation Kingdom Siam I. i. ii. 6 The Siameses give to themselves the name of Tai, or free, as the word now signifies in their language.

1798 Asiatick Researches 5 227 The first dialect is that of the kingdom of Siam, the most polished people of eastern India. They called themselves to me simply Tai.

1811 Asiatic Researches (London ed.) 10 241 He divides them into two races, the Tai and the Tai Yai.

1844 Chinese Repository 13 169 The inhabitants of this country are not called Siamese but T‘ai.

1902 Census of India 1901 XII. viii. 119 We are..practically where we were ten years ago in respect of our acquaintance with the early beginnings of the Tai.

1978 Amer. Poetry Rev. Nov. 15/1 Judith Gautier's informant and lover was a Tai and often himself did not understand the Chinese.

1837 Jrnl. Asiatic Soc. Bengal 6 i. 18 The sound of the French u..is..common in the Tai.

1939 L. H. Gray Found. Lang. 390 The other members of the Tai-Chinese family are Si-lo-mo.., Karen.., and Tai, the latter sub-divided into south-eastern, eastern, and northern. To the south-eastern division belong Siamese, Lao, Lü, and Khün.

1948 R. A. D. Forrest Chinese Lang. v. 100 There is evidence that T‘ai in an older phase used a system of prefixes and infixes in word formation.

1956 J. Whatmough Lang. ii. 32 Note also Tai (Siamese).

1837 Jrnl. Asiatic Soc. Bengal 6 i. 18 The Ahom is a branch of the Tai language, which is spoken, with some variations, by the Khamtis, the Shyáns, the Láos, and the Siamese, all of whom designate themselves by the general appellation of Tai. Among the Ahoms, or the portion of the Tai race inhabiting Assám, the language is nearly extinct.

1883 A. P. Phayre Hist. Burma i. 12 People of the Tai race were..in the country of the..river..Sâlwin; and there is evidence of an irruption of that people into the country of the Irâwadi.

1892 Census of India 1891 IX. viii. 167 The Tai language, of which there are numerous dialects, is essentially a Polytonic language.

1892 Census of India 1891 IX. viii. 202 A great wave of Tai migration descended.

1902 Census of India 1901 XII. viii. 119 The classification of the Tai races is a task of far greater magnitude than appeared when the last census was taken.

1933 L. Bloomfield Lang. iv. 69 The second branch of Indo-Chinese is the Tai family, which includes Siamese.

1948 R. A. D. Forrest Chinese Lang. v. 98 The T‘ai languages are remarkably uniform over their wide area.

1977 New Yorker 5 Sept. 40/3 Of the three groups..the best off were the Tai Dam..members of a Tai racial group that had settled in China many years ago.