leng zai

English

Borrowed from Cantonese 靚仔／靓仔 (leng³ zai², “handsome”).

leng zai (plural leng zais)

(Malaysia, Singapore) good-looking man, pretty boy
- 2019 June 27, Ovidia Yu, The Paper Bark Tree Mystery, Constable, →ISBN:
  Even hardened gangsters teasingly addressed him as leng zai or 'pretty boy' and told him to marry their daughters so they would have grandchildren as cute as he was.
- 2022 September 1, Julianne Cheah, The Death of Sally Song, Monsoon Books, →ISBN:
  'So, you got talk to the leng zai or not?' 'I talked to all of them. They're all —' But Auntie Fong had only one of them on her mind. 'So that leng zai, you think he's chup or not?' 'Which one ah?' 'The tall one lah! Sound like ang moh.'

leng zai (comparative more leng zai, superlative most leng zai)

(Malaysia, Singapore) handsome; good-looking (of a man)
- 2021, Daryl Qilin Yam, Lovelier, Lonelier, Epigram Books, →ISBN:
  And whenever he visited he'd bring food from the kopitiam next door, and Mrs Wong would laugh and say aiyoh, leng zai, so sweet. […]He could see her mother's mouth widen with laughter as she called him leng zai, could just about picture the colour on her painted nails as she passed around the lo mai gai he'd bought for the other aunties to eat.
- 2022 January 19, Ian Walkinshaw, Pragmatics in English as a Lingua Franca: Findings and Developments, Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, →ISBN:
  S2: then i plan lah maybe thirty minutes later lah i will go then the invigilator is too too leng zai {cantonese: handsome} ah i don't dare to ask you know