Chimaek: Chicken, Beer, and Korean Word Origins

Chi-maek is a Korean word meaning fried chicken and beer, a now-classic combination in South Korea. We can also use this word as a window into the origins if Korean words, as it contains parts of words from two major sources of Korean vocabulary.
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Today's word: 치맥
Chi-maek is a portmanteau that means chicken and beer.
Origins:
chi- comes from chicken, an English word from the Old English originally meaning plural of chicks, as in baby birds - like children or oxen. (https://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/ingredients/article/the-etymology-of-chicken-cock-and-other-fowl-words)
Maek - comes from maekju, the Korean word for beer, a Sino-Korean word. Maek means barley, which much beer is made of.
This word first appears in a newspaper in 2010, in the lead-up to the 2010 World Cup, via BIGKINDS: https://www.kinds.or.kr/v2/news/newsDetailView.do?newsId=02100701.20160114032022036 (https://www.kinds.or.kr/v2/news/newsDetailView.do?newsId=02100701.20160114032022036)

Related words:
chi-kol, chicken and cola (kids)
chi-so, chicken and soju - a newer thing
pi-maek, pizza and beer, also a newer thing in Korea
 
Linguistic element: Word origins and loanwords in Korean
Korean lexicon is about 30% "Native Korean" words, 65% Sino-Korean words, and 5% words with other origins (Sohn, Ho-Min. "Korean in contact with Chinese." Korean Language in Culture and Society (2006): 44-56.) Alternately, 35%/60%/5% as given by Lee et al. (Lee, E., Madigan, S., & Park, M.-J. (2015). An Introduction to Korean Linguistics (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315678016.)

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Chi-maek is a Korean word meaning fried chicken and beer, a now-classic combination in South Korea. We can also use this word as a window into the origins if Korean words, as it contains parts of words from two major sources of Korean vocabulary.

Show introduction:

Why are we doing this podcast? What qualifies us to talk about it? What are our plans?

Today's word: 치맥

Chi-maek is a portmanteau that means chicken and beer.

Origins:

chi- comes from chicken, an English word from the Old English originally meaning plural of chicks, as in baby birds - like children or oxen. (https://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/ingredients/article/the-etymology-of-chicken-cock-and-other-fowl-words)

Maek - comes from maekju, the Korean word for beer, a Sino-Korean word. Maek means barley, which much beer is made of.

This word first appears in a newspaper in 2010, in the lead-up to the 2010 World Cup, via BIGKINDS: https://www.kinds.or.kr/v2/news/newsDetailView.do?newsId=02100701.20160114032022036

Related words:

chi-kol, chicken and cola (kids)

chi-so, chicken and soju - a newer thing

pi-maek, pizza and beer, also a newer thing in Korea

Linguistic element: Word origins and loanwords in Korean

Korean lexicon is about 30% "Native Korean" words, 65% Sino-Korean words, and 5% words with other origins (Sohn, Ho-Min. "Korean in contact with Chinese." Korean Language in Culture and Society (2006): 44-56.) Alternately, 35%/60%/5% as given by Lee et al. (Lee, E., Madigan, S., & Park, M.-J. (2015). An Introduction to Korean Linguistics (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315678016.)

Outro

Follow us on social media:

@HanmadiKorean on Twitter

[email protected] with any comments, questions, or requests.

Website: hanmadikorean.com

Theme music: The Boating Trip by LATG Music.