Word.ws English Dictionary

heng ah

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Singapore/ˈheŋ˦ ɑː(˧˨)/

heng ah interjection: phew!, thank goodness; expressing relief, e.g., when an extremely unlucky outcome has been avoided.

Interjection

  1. (Manglish, Singlish) Phew!, thank goodness; expressing relief, e.g., when an extremely unlucky outcome has been avoided.
    • "Heng ah," Tan sighed. "Nightmare only."2010 January 6, Victor Yek, Abyss (ebook), →ISBN
    • Political succession in Singapore is clear as mud but the People’s Action Party have announced the office-bearers in their central executive committee. […]2018 November 24, Kirsten Han, “#31: Heng ah, I haven't kena defamation. (Not yet.)”, in wethecitizens.net

Origin of heng ah

From Teochew 興啊 /兴啊 (hêng¹ a⁷) or Hokkien 幸啊 (hēng--a). By surface analysis, heng (“lucky”) + ah (used for emphasis).

Questions about heng ah

What does heng ah mean?
Heng ah means phew!, thank goodness; expressing relief, e.g., when an extremely unlucky outcome has been avoided.
What part of speech is heng ah?
Heng ah is an interjection.
How do you pronounce heng ah?
Heng ah is pronounced /ˈheŋ˦ ɑː(˧˨)/ (Singapore).

Words near heng ah in the dictionary

  1. henfests
  2. Henfield
  3. henfish
  4. Henfrey
  5. heng
  6. heng ah
  7. Heng-yang
  8. Hengchin
  9. Hengchun
  10. henge
  11. Hengel

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: heng ah (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.

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