Korean

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Sino-Korean word from 女人, from (female) + (person)

Pronunciation

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Romanizations
Revised Romanization?yeoin
Revised Romanization (translit.)?yeoin
McCune–Reischauer?yŏin
Yale Romanization?yein

Noun

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여인 (yeoin) (hanja 女人)

  1. (literary) woman, lady

Usage notes

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Korean has a number of words equivalent to English "man" and "woman".

  1. Sino-Korean 남자 (男子, namja, “boy; guy; man”) and 여자 (女子, yeoja, “girl; woman”) are the most common words, but can have a somewhat informal connotation.
    남자? — 아니, 여자.
    Gyae-neun namja-ya? - Ani, yeoja-ya.
    Is he/she a guy? — No, she's a girl.
    남자친구 / 여자친구
    namja-chin'gu / yeoja-chin'gu
    boyfriend / girlfriend
  2. Sino-Korean 남성 (男性, namseong, “male; men”) and 여성 (女性, yeoseong, “female; women”) refer to men and women as groups—though pluralized 남자 (namja-deul, the boys; the guys; the men) and 여자 (yeoja-deul, the girls; the women) is informally more common for this purpose—or to individual adult men and women in formal or polite contexts.
    여성 인권 운동
    yeoseong in'gwon undong
    women's rights movement, feminism
    20 남성 실종되습니다. (in a news report)
    20dae namseong-i siljongdoe-eot-seumnida.
    A man in his twenties has gone missing.
  3. Sino-Korean 여인 (女人, yeoin, “woman”) is literary. There is no male counterpart.
    여인 향기 (movie title)
    yeoin-ui hyanggi
    Scent of a Woman
  4. The bare Sino-Korean morphemes (, nam, “male”) and (, yeo, “female”) is generally used in formal contexts, especially when referring to each gender as a collective but also for male or female individuals in more legalistic contexts. They are commonly written in hanja even when the rest of the text is in pure Hangul script.
    만남
    nam-gwa yeo-ui mannam
    the meeting of Man and Woman
  5. Native 사내 (sanae, man) and 계집 (gyejip, woman) are not as commonly used. 사내 (sanae) often has a connotation of machismo or manliness, while 계집 (gyejip) has become offensive and derogatory.

Note that in Early Modern Korean (1600—c. 1900) and in contemporary Standard North Korean, Sino-Korean (, yeo, “female”) is written and pronounced (nyeo), hence 녀자 (女子, nyeoja), 녀성 (女性, nyeoseong), 녀인 (女人, nyeoin).