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jialat. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
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English
Etymology
Borrowed from Hokkien 食力 (chia̍h-la̍t, “to be exhausting”), with spelling influenced by Mandarin Pinyin.
Pronunciation
Adjective
jialat (comparative more jialat, superlative most jialat)
- (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.
- (Singlish, Manglish, by extension) Terrible; disastrous.
2019 March 2, Lyn Chan, “When an emergency hits, will you know what to do?”, in Today:According to his doctors, every minute he had remained unconscious would have added to his life being in danger. "If it were 10 minutes... jialat (terrible)!" he said.
2020 January 14, Justin Vanderstraaten, quoting Moon, “Drugs, Cash, and Prison. When Does Enough Become Enough?”, in ricemedia.co, archived from the original on 26 February 2024:Seeing my Dad in that state was a huge shock. I was like ‘eh what the fuck! What’s wrong with you?!’ […] ‘Lucky I didn’t die, boy!’ he told me. Jialat sia.