If some of you are like me, you may have thought the word 생쥐 meant "live mouse," based on such words as 생방송 (live broadcast) and 생음악 (live music); however, there is no way the mouse in the above picture could still be alive, so what does 생쥐 mean?
In the past, I was curious about the word 생쥐 because of the Korean expression 물에 빠진 생쥐, which means "a drowned mouse" and is used to describe someone who is soaking wet. I was curious because I had thought 생쥐 meant "live mouse" and could not understand how a drowned mouse could still be alive, so I looked up the word.
생쥐 is an abbreviated form of 새앙쥐, which is a kind of small mouse here in Korea. And the 새앙 in 새앙쥐 is supposed to mean "생강" (ginger), which supposedly implies the mouse is the size of a piece of ginger. I do not know if that is true, but that is what I've read.
By the way, would anyone be interested in a half-eaten bag of 새우깡?
