잘생기다

Korean

Etymology

잘 (jal, “well”) +‎ 생기다 (saenggida, “to appear, to emerge; (in past tense constructions) to appear, to look”).

Pronunciation

• (SK Standard/Seoul) IPA^(key): [t͡ɕa̠ɭsʰɛŋɡida̠] ~ [t͡ɕa̠ɭsʰe̞ŋɡida̠]
• Phonetic hangul: [잘생기다/잘셍기다]

Romanizations
Revised Romanization?	jalsaenggida
Revised Romanization (translit.)?	jalsaenggida
McCune–Reischauer?	chalsaenggida
Yale Romanization?	cal.sayngkita

Verb

잘생기다 • (jalsaenggida) (infinitive 잘생겨 or 잘생기어, sequential 잘생기니)

1. (defective) to be handsome, good-looking, beautiful

   Antonym: 못생기다 (motsaenggida)

Usage notes

The verb is defective due to the etymological semantics and primarily occurs in the morphological past tense (literally "to have emerged well" > "to be handsome"), e.g. 잘생겼다 (jalsaenggyeotda, “he is handsome”), 잘생긴 (jalsaenggin, “who is handsome”).

There is much dispute among linguists of Korean over whether it and similar stems should be categorized as verbs or adjectives. The National Institute of the Korean Language currently supports the argument that it is a verb as the morphological past tense has a stative sense pertaining to the present, which is true of certain verbs (e.g. 늙다 (neukda, “to age”) > 늙었다 (neulgeotda, “he is old”, literally “he has aged”)) but not generally of adjectives (e.g. 예쁘다 (yeppeuda, “to be pretty”) > 예뻤다 (yeppeotda, “she was pretty”)).

Synonyms

• (straight, clean): 반반하다 (banbanhada, “pretty, good-looking”), 반듯하다 (bandeuthada, “pretty, good-looking”)
• (stylish): 멋있다 (meositda, “cool, stylish, wonderful”)
• (long and smooth): 훤칠하다 (hwonchilhada, “attractively tall”)