This is the earliest known term for “spy” in Tagalog. The word batiao is recorded in the first printed vocabulary in the Philippines — Fr. Pedro de San Buenaventura’s Vocabulario de la lengua tagala.
batyáw
informer
batyáw
spy
The contemporary word tiktik, meaning “spy,” seams to have appeared only in the 19th century — in a later edition of Juan Noceda and Pedro San Lucar’s Vocabulario.
batyawán
to spy on
pagbatyáw
espionage
The Spanish-derived word now commonly used is espiya.
