Word.ws English Dictionary

agak-agak

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Singapore/ˈɑɡɑ(ʔ)ˌɑɡɑ(ʔ)/

agak-agak verb: to estimate or guess.

Verb

agak-agak (invariable)

  1. (Manglish, Singlish, invariable) To estimate or guess.
    • I am only trying my very best to recall what my granny did.....not agak agak, best of luck!!1998 August 23, chong, “Tapai (fermented tapioca)”, in soc.culture.malaysia, retrieved 05 Sep 2018
    • We fail to estimate how many are present in a HUGE UM*NO roadshow...and we fail to agak-agak the number ppl in and outside of cars crying "repom" slogans on a NOT SO LONG road as Jalan TAR.1998, EyEwItNeSs, soc.culture.malaysia, retrieved 05 Sep 2018

Adjective

agak-agak (not comparable)

  1. (Manglish, Singlish) Involving guesswork.
    • A man who together with his partner - a few years and several hundred sketches ago - came out with the "agak agak" philosophy.1972 March 12, Edgar Koh, “the Comedians”, in New Nation, page 7
    • Instinct and a brash and breezy "agak agak" style is the way men occasional chefs, not professional ones cook.1975 January 23, Betty L. Khoo, “When a man wears the apron and cooks to woo”, in New Nation, page 23

Examples of agak-agak in a sentence

  • When cooking, for example, if asked how much sugar you put in, you could reply 'I just agak-agak.'1999, Adam Brown, Singapore English in a Nutshell, Singapore: Federal Publications, →ISBN, page 3:
  • Kelly always said,'We Baba follow the agak-agak principle.'2007, Sidney Cheung, Chee-Beng Tan, editors, Food and Foodways in Asia: Resource, Tradition and Cooking, Abingdon: Routledge, →ISBN:

Forms of agak-agak

alternative formagak agak
alternative formagar-agar

Origin of agak-agak

From Malay agak-agak, a reduplication of agak (“to estimate”).

Questions about agak-agak

What does agak-agak mean?
Agak-agak means to estimate or guess.
How do you use agak-agak in a sentence?
When cooking, for example, if asked how much sugar you put in, you could reply 'I just agak-agak.'
What part of speech is agak-agak?
Agak-agak can be a verb or an adjective.
How do you pronounce agak-agak?
Agak-agak is pronounced /ˈɑɡɑ(ʔ)ˌɑɡɑ(ʔ)/ (Singapore).

Words near agak-agak in the dictionary

  1. againstisms
  2. againstness
  3. againsts
  4. agait
  5. agak agak
  6. agak-agak
  7. agal
  8. agal-agal
  9. agalactia
  10. agalactias
  11. agalactic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: agak-agak (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “agak-agak.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/agak-agak. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.