• The term “kelong” originated from the Hokkien (Minnan) dialect for “chicken coop”. During the early days, the free ranging chickens in farms had to be round up and placed in chicken coops for the night to prevent theft. The fishing facilities used by the early fishermen in Singapore served similar functions as the chicken coops, so people started calling them “chicken coops”. The Malay pronunciation of the Hokkien term is kelong, which is a transliteration of the original Hokkien term. Over time, people have mistaken the word to be of Malay origin, and translated it into the Chinese word “奎笼”.
  

Inspired by treehouses and kelongs, the first playground designed by residents was officially completed yesterday. This project took two and a half years to complete and involved 1800 people. (Lianhe Zaobao, 8/1/2018)

• During the 1970s, Malaysia and Singapore took turns to organise the football league matches. The interest in the matches attracted the attention of illegal gambling syndicates. They organised odds around the matches for people to bet on. The lucrative returns from the illegal bets led syndicates to bribe players to play deceitful matches, in order to manipulate the results. People referred to these types of matches as “kelong”. Subsequently, the term was also used to describe faked events or scams.