lugi

variants: lugi, rugi
IPA: /'lu.ɡ̊i/, /'ru.gi/

Singlish, meaning "lose out". It bears associations with kiasuism, because the word assumes a comparison with others (the world) although it is intransitive. One lugies if he allows other people to cut in front of him in a queue, for instance.

A Hokkien corruption of Malay rugi, "loss", from Sanskrit roga, "disease, broken", from reconstructed PIE *leug-, "to break, to cause pain", from *leu-, "loosen, separate, cut apart".

/l/ <=> /r/ appears to be a frequent sound change between languages, probably because they are both approximants involving curling the tongue. Sanskrit changed *leug- => rog-, but uncannily the Hokkien corruption from rugi to lugi restores the Sanskrit root closer to the original PIE. Note that the sound also affects the quality of the /g/ - the Hokkien variant voices it considerably less than the Malay.

Coxford asserts rugi as the default, probably for etymological reasons, calling "lugi" the "hardcore beng" pronunciation. However, it seems that lugi is more common on the street, probably because of its similarity to English "lose".

Lose is an actual cognate of this Singlish word. Because of the Hokkien reversal of the Sanskrit sound change, on top of Malay changes to the Sanskrit, lugi is not very different from its 7000-year English cousin. English "lose" is from Old English losian, from los, from reconstructed Proto-Germanic *lausa, from the same PIE root *leu- (see the link at *leu-). "Loss" is from the same root.

Interesting classical cousins of Singlish lugi include Greek -lysis, "to break apart", (e.g. hydrolysis) and Latin lugubris, "sad, mournful", from descendant root *leug- (see link above for *leug-), found in English as lugubrious. Other Sanskrit descendants from *leug- include rujati, "breaks, torments".

Notes: etymology reconstructed from personal research. Time periods for entry into Malay and Singlish respectively would be appreciated, as well as dialect data for widespreadness and demographics of variants.