Word.ws English Dictionary

sayang

More pronunciations (2)Fewer pronunciations

Malaysia/ˈsa.jaŋ/Philippines/ˈsa.jɑŋ/

sayang noun: love.

Noun

sayang (uncountable)

  1. (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, colloquial) love
  2. (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, colloquial, endearing) sweetheart, darling

Verb

sayang (indeclinable)

  1. (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, colloquial, indeclinable) to love, adore
    • He does sayang me a lot
  2. (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, colloquial, indeclinable) to regret, to miss (regret the absence of)
  3. (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, colloquial, indeclinable, main sense in general colloquial Singapore English) to soothe, to caress
  4. (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, colloquial, indeclinable) to call someone by an affectionate nickname such as 'darling'

Adjective

sayang (comparative more sayang, superlative most sayang)

  1. (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, colloquial) pitiful, regrettable

Interjection

(Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, colloquial)

  1. (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, colloquial) alas, what a pity!
    • “Um, okay...” Rosa glanced at the blank boxes. “Cried over spilled milk. Six letters, third letter is a...”
      “Sayang,” said the old man cheerfully.
      “Sayang. It fits, po...”
      “Sayang. That's what I say whenever I spill some milk.” He cackled.
      “With these weak wrists and fingers, I say sayang several...2005, Alex Garland, “Sandmen”, in The Tesseract, Penguin Group (USA) Inc., →ISBN
    • But going back to my dad, he died four years ago of leukemia. So he never met my daughter and he never reached the date of our wedding. So sayang. So I decided I wanted to write a book about him. I wanted to write a book for him and about him, for my daughter so she would get to know her lolo. And...2017, Russell Molina, “Magic Secrets, Revealed”, in Bumasa at Lumaya 2: A Sourcebook on Children's Literature in the Philippines, Anvil Publishing, Inc., →ISBN

Forms of sayang

comparativemore sayang
superlativemost sayang

Origin of sayang

* (Singaporean and Malaysian English): Borrowed from Malay sayang. * (Philippine English): Borrowed from Tagalog sayang.

Questions about sayang

What does sayang mean?
Sayang means love.
What part of speech is sayang?
Sayang can be a noun, a verb, an adjective or an interjection.
How do you pronounce sayang?
Sayang is pronounced /ˈsa.jaŋ/ (Malaysia).

Words near sayang in the dictionary

  1. sayable
  2. sayableness
  3. sayables
  4. Sayako
  5. Sayan
  6. sayang
  7. Sayangan
  8. Sayans
  9. Sayantan
  10. Sayao
  11. sayas

Source and license

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