In the 1500s the tapnet, topnet, toppet, or simply 'tap' was a basket made of rushes used for shipping dried fruit, primarily figs. This was apparently not very different from the previous basket used for raisins and figs, the frail. Both of these baskets held approximately 30 pounds of fruit, and were used as a unit of measure, in much the same way as we use 'bushel'.

Over time, the tapnet came to refer not only to the basket, but to the figs they contained. The figs shipped in these baskets tended to be of lower quality, often referred to as figo doudo ('wild fig' in Portuguese, although it would more literally translate as 'mad fig'), or, in England, 'fig dodes'. As late as the 1920s, cheap figs from Portugal and Spain were sometimes referred to as tapnet figs.

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