Friday, July 08, 2011

How do Koreans say "to pass the buck"?

The American idiom "to pass the buck" is translated in Korean as 책임을 전가하다. 책임(責任) means "responsibility," and 전가(轉嫁) means "to impute" or "to attribute."

What I find interesting about the Korean expression is that 전가(轉嫁) also means "to remarry" on the part of a women. The Chinese characters literally mean "transfer the wife's marriage."

Unloading your wife onto the back of another man seems like a perfect example of "passing the buck."

2 comments:

Eunyoung said...

"책임을 전가하다" sounds very formal. more commonly, I would say "책임을 돌리다".

Lupita said...

Thanks for sharing your experiences here on your blog --- I enjoyed this post, and I'm looking forward to more.