(Singapore, Singlish, colloquial, ) unlucky, unfortunate.
(Singapore, Singlish, colloquial, ) unlucky, unfortunate.
You want to seem like you've actually read all 3 books, but — damn suay — even The New Paper is too 'cheem' for you. Neh'mine!
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Regional slang from around the English-speaking world — British, Australian, Irish, Caribbean, Nigerian, Filipino, AAVE, and the hyphenated-English dialects that make the internet sound local.
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Lucky, fortunate, or "phew, that was close". From Hokkien 幸 (hēng / hēng-ūn — luck, good fortune). Used both as an exclamation on its own ("Heng!" — "thank goodness!") and as an adjective ("damn heng leh", "really heng today"). The most common framing is "wah heng" — "wow, lucky!" — when the speaker has narrowly escaped something bad. The opposite of "suay" (unlucky). One of the warmest, most reflexively-used words in Singapore and Malaysian English, especially after a near miss or unexpected good news.