掘 emphasizes active digging motion, especially downward or inward.

Related characters:


to bore, to pierce, to drill, chisel, hole

to cut, to pare, to reduce, to remove

to bend, to yield, to submit, to decline, to weaken

 — to bend (phonetic base)
挖 — to dig

A phono-semantic compound consisting of:


hand

 (hand) — semantic component, indicates manual action;


 — phonetic component, supplying the sound (굴 / jué).
Originally, it referred to digging earth by bending or pushing inward (

 implies bending).

Semantic development:
- to dig soil;
- to excavate ground;
- to uncover hidden objects;
- to discover talent or truth (metaphorical).
The meaning expanded from physical digging to intellectual discovery.

In Korean, 掘 appears mainly in technical or formal vocabulary.

굴착 (掘鑿) — excavation
발굴 (發掘) — excavation; discovery
굴진 (掘進) — tunneling; excavation progress

Characters

Words

Vocabulary

to discard, to give up, to donate

to seize, to catch, to arrest, to capture

to hold up with both hands, to revere, to serve

to discard, to abandon, to give up

to sweep, to clear away, to eradicate

to give

palm of the hand, to hold in the hand, to manage, to govern

to push away, to expel, to arrange in order, to line up, to reject

to dig, to excavate, to hollow out

to hang, to suspend, to attach

to gather, to pick, to pluck

to search, to look for, to probe, to explore

to connect, to join, to come into contact, to receive, to engage

to push, to infer, to postpone

to place, to set, to put down

to mock, to ridicule, to tease

to draw, to depict, to sketch

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Chinese character

Explore 214 Chinese radicals and their derived characters. Sort by radical or stroke count, and view the complete list of official Hanja radicals.

掘

Etymology

Usage in Korean

Additional notes

Words that derived from 掘

Neighboring characters in the dictionary