• to wear, to cover oneself with, garment, quilt;

Etymology

It is a phono-semantic compound, composed of:

衣 (“clothing, garment”) as the semantic element;

皮 (“skin, hide”) as the phonetic element.

The original sense was “to cover with clothing or fabric.”

Usage in Korean

被 evolved from a concrete meaning of covering the body with cloth or hide into a highly productive character expressing clothing, bedding, and passive constructions in both grammar and compound vocabulary.

In Korean, 피 (被) appears in many compounds relating to clothing, covering, or being subjected to something:

피복 (被服) – clothing, apparel

이불 (被褥) – blanket, bedding

피해 (被害) – damage, harm (lit. “to receive harm”)

피격 (被擊) – being attacked

피살 (被殺) – being killed

Here the passive nuance also survives in words denoting suffering harm or being subjected to an action.

입을
ib-eul
pi
Kangxi radical:145, + 5
Strokes:10
Unicode:U+88AB
Cangjie input:
  • 中木竹水 (LDHE)
Composition:
  • ⿰ 衤 皮

Characters next to each other in the list

References