jialat
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English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Borrowed from Hokkien 食力 (chia̍h-la̍t, “to be exhausting”), with spelling influenced by Mandarin Pinyin.
Pronunciation
[edit]Adjective
[edit]jialat (comparative more jialat, superlative most jialat) (colloquial, Singapore, Malaysia, Singlish, Manglish)
- Sapping of one’s strength; tiresome
- 1997 October 19, Thye Hoon Lin, “Singapore Ties to Heroin Traffickers: News Release”, in soc.culture.malaysia (Usenet):
- wah lao...... jialat ahhhh you.
- 2015 December 17, Kelly Tay Soon Weilun, “The Singapore economy, colloquially speaking”, in Business Times, →OCLC:
- None of the economists polled expect the economy to contract - be it a technical recession or a real recession - and hit the alamak and jialat ranges.
- (by extension) Terrible; disastrous