Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Is the Sino-Korean word for "woodpecker" 탁목조 (啄木造) or 탁목조 (啄木鳥)?

ANSWER: I think it is 탁목조 (啄木鳥), which literally means "a pecking (啄) tree (木) bird (鳥)."

Instead of using the Chinese character for "bird" (鳥 조) in 탁목조, my Korean-English dictionary uses the Chinese character for "to build" (造 조), which is pronounced the same as the character for "bird" (鳥 조). I think it is just a mistake in my dictionary. There are not many mistakes in my dictionary, but I have found a few.

By the way, the pure Korean word for "woodpecker" is 딱따구리.

From Dong-A's Prime Korean-English Dictionary

No comments:

Post a Comment