Agar-agar

//ˈɑɡɑ ˌɑɡɑ// adj, noun, verb

adj, noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Agar. uncountable

    "That done, you heat soya milk with oil and several flakes of agar-agar – a tasteless vegan alternative to gelatine – which dissolve into the liquid over 10 minutes, except they don’t, not really."

  2. 2
    a colloidal extract of algae; used especially in culture media and as a gelling agent in foods wordnet
  3. 3
    A jelly dessert made from agar. Malaysia, Singapore, uncountable
Verb
  1. 1
    Alternative spelling of agak-agak (“to estimate”). Singapore, Singlish, alt-of, alternative, invariable

    "So I just got to agar-agar lor."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Alternative spelling of agak-agak (“involving guesswork”). Singapore, Singlish, alt-of, alternative, not-comparable

Synonyms

All synonyms
agar

Example

More examples

"He wants more sago and agar-agar."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Malay agar-agar (“jelly”).

Etymology 2

From Malay agak-agak. Here, the letter k represents a glottal stop, but it is elided by many speakers in Singapore.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.