Saturday, November 17, 2018

What does 질주 mean?

ANSWER: speeding, running rapidly

My Korean-English dictionary marks 질주 (疾走) as a very frequently used word in Korea, which suggests Korean language learners should learn this word. 질주하다, of course, is the verb form and means to run fast or to run at full speed. My Korean-Korean dictionary defines 질주 as 빨리 달림 since 빨리 means fast and 달리다 is a pure Korean verb that also means to run. Another pure Korean word that can also mean to run is 뛰다, so I assume 질주 could also be defined as 빨리 뜀. The subject of the verb 질주하다 can be a person, an animal, or a vehicle, so almost anything that can run fast.

Okay, so why am I posting about this? Because today I noticed that the 질 (疾) in 질주 (疾走) is the Chinese character that means sickness or disease. For example, it is also in the word 질병 (疾病), which means sickness or disease. That made me wonder why 疾 (질) was used in the word 질주, so I looked up 疾 (질) in my Chinese character dictionary and noticed for the first time that it can also mean fast. (I do not know why I never noticed it before.) That means 질주(疾走) literally means quickly (疾) run (走).

I am still unsure how 疾 (질) came to mean fast, but the components of the character are 疒 (엄), which means sickness, and 失 (실), which means arrow, so the 失 part of the character may have something to do with 疾 (질) also meaning fast since an arrow can be pretty fast on the fly.

Anyway, here is a YouTube video that talks about the word 질주 (疾走):


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