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Survey reveals S’poreans most common taboo action

Hands up if you’ve jaywalked across the street because you were either too impatient to wait for the traffic light or too lazy to climb the overhead bridge.

Don’t be shy – you’re not the only one. Far from it.

A recent survey by the Singapore unit of multinational U.S. toy company Hasbro found that 63 per cent of Singaporean respondents said jaywalking is a taboo action they are most guilty of. Other top taboo actions include littering, cutting a queue, smoking in non-designated areas and faking illness for a medical certificate.

In the survey, 734 Singaporeans aged 16 to 50 were given 19 taboo actions and asked to pick one that they were most guilty of committing.

They were also asked to pick their favourite local expression used in everyday conversation from among 21 choices.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, the top choice for nearly half of the respondents was “Alamak”, which is a Malay expression of dismay or surprise.

Coming in second with 40 per cent of the votes is “Kiasu”, a Singaporean term to describe someone who is overly competitive and afraid to lose. This was followed by expressions such as “Act blur”, “Siam” which means “get out of the way” in Hokkien and “Gila”, the Malay definition for crazy.

These findings were released on Tuesday in conjunction with the launch of Hasbro’s latest Taboo Singapore game edition. Taboo is a party word game where players will take turns to describe a word on the cards to their partners but without using the five associated words or phrases seen on the cards.

The company launched the first local edition of the game back in October 2006.

The new Singapore version comprises 400 local guess words, which covers familiar acronyms such as ATM and ERP as well as expressions like “Blur like sotong” and “Yaya papaya”.