잘생기다

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Korean

Etymology

(jal, well) +‎ 생기다 (saenggida, to appear, to emerge; (in past tense constructions) to appear, to look).

Pronunciation

Romanizations
Revised Romanization?jalsaenggida
Revised Romanization (translit.)?jalsaenggida
McCune–Reischauer?chalsaenggida
Yale Romanization?cal.sayngkita

Verb

잘생기다 (jalsaenggida) (infinitive 잘생겨 or 잘생기어, sequential 잘생기니)

  1. (defective) to be handsome, good-looking, beautiful
    Antonym: 못생기다 (motsaenggida)

Usage notes

The verb is defective due to the etymological semantics and primarily occurs in the morphological past tense (literally "to have emerged well" > "to be handsome"), e.g. 잘생겼다 (jalsaenggyeotda, “he is handsome”), 잘생긴 (jalsaenggin, “who is handsome”).

There is much dispute among linguists of Korean over whether it and similar stems should be categorized as verbs or adjectives.[1][2] The National Institute of the Korean Language currently supports the argument that it is a verb as the morphological past tense has a stative sense pertaining to the present, which is true of certain verbs (e.g. 늙다 (neukda, to age) > 늙었다 (neulgeotda, he is old, literally he has aged)) but not generally of adjectives (e.g. 예쁘다 (yeppeuda, to be pretty) > 예뻤다 (yeppeotda, she was pretty)).

Synonyms

References

  1. ^ 황화상 [hwanghwasang] (2019) “'잘생기다'류 용언의 품사와 활용 [jalsaenggida ryu yong'eonui pumsawa hwaryong, The part of speech and inflections of the calsayngkita-type stems]”, in Han'guk sajeonhak, volume 33, pages 182—212
  2. ^ 배주채 [baejuchae] (2014) “'잘생기다'류의 품사 [jalsaenggida ryuui pumsa, The part of speech of the calsayngkita-type stems]”, in Han'gukhak yeon'gu, volume 32, pages 375—409