價
- price, value, worth;
Etymology
Phono-semantic compound:
人 (person) provides the semantic element, indicating human activity;
賈 (merchant, to trade) provides the phonetic element.
Alternate interpretation: both 人 and 賈 contribute meaning — “a person engaged in buying and selling (賈),” leading to the sense of “price” or “value.”
Closely related to 賈 itself (“merchant, to sell”), and sometimes interchangeable in older texts.
Semantic range:
- price, cost (가격);
- value, worth (가치);
- figuratively: importance, esteem.
Usage in Korean
價格 (가격) — price
價値 (가치) — value, worth
定價 (정가) — fixed price
原價 (원가) — original price, cost price
無價 (무가) — priceless
Additional notes
In everyday Korean, “값(價)” also conveys figurative worth, as in 값을 하다 (“to live up to one’s value”).
In Chinese, the simplified form 价 is used, but note that it shares the graph with the unrelated character 价 (“클 개” in traditional classification). Context disambiguates.
The character 賈 is both semantically related (“merchant”) and a surname, and can sometimes stand in for 價 in classical usage.