Language Matters | Where the word kiasu came from and how it spread

Do you know the word kiasu? If not, then be kiasu and google it. You’ll get more than a million hits and learn that, usually associated with Singaporeans, it means “to be afraid of losing out”. You’ll come across refer­ences to kiasu parents, kiasu companies and even kiasuapps.

Just four decades ago, the Hokkien term kian su was confined to Singapore army slang. As the dominant lingua franca of Chinese Singaporeans, Hokkien terms first spread among males performing compulsory national service. But before long, this one had entered everyday, albeit colloquial, Singapore English.

The first formal use of kiasuoccurred in 1990, in an offi­cial parliamentary document: “I wish that the Govern­ment Ministers do not become infected with the same kiasu syndrome that they themselves have advised other people against.”

Since then it has been spotted on numerous occasions, including in local press reports. It surfaces regionally, too. In 1992, Malaysia’s New Straits Timeswrote of “‘kiasu’ parents [loading] their children with excessive, sometimes irrelevant, supplementary materials”.