tápis: A piece of dark cloth or lace, often richly worked or embroidered, worn at the waist somewhat in the fashion of an apron: a distinctive portion of the native women’s attire, especially among the Tagalogs.
tarambulo: A low weed whose leaves and fruit pedicles are covered with short, sharp spines.
teniente-mayor: Senior lieutenant, the senior member of the town council and substitute for the gobernadorcillo.
tikas-tikas: A variety of canna bearing bright red flowers.
tertiary brethren: Members of a lay society affiliated with a regular monastic order, especially the Venerable Tertiary Order of the Franciscans.
timbaín: The “water-cure,” and hence, any kind of torture. The primary meaning is “to draw water from a well,” from timba, pail.
tikbalang: An evil spirit, capable of assuming various forms, but said to appear usually in the shape of a tall black man with disproportionately long legs: the “bogey man” of Tagalog children.
tulisan: Outlaw, bandit. Under the old régime in the Philippines the tulisanes were those who, on account of real or fancied grievances against the authorities, or from fear of punishment for crime, or from an instinctive desire to return to primitive simplicity, foreswore life in the towns “under the bell,” and made their homes in the mountains or other remote places. Gathered in small bands with such arms as they could secure, they sustained themselves by highway robbery and the levying of blackmail from the country folk.
zacate: Native grass used for feeding livestock.