# 씨 도 안먹히는 소리



## vientito

I heard this very often on drama... I know what it means but could anyone tell me what is the origin of this phrase and how it comes to mean what it means?


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## kenjoluma

http://krdic.naver.com/detail.nhn?docid=24454100

Long story short, it meant 'it is hard to put a weft (씨 or 씨실) across the warp(날실)'.

If you can't put a weft in, you can't weave a cloth.


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## 조금만

To expand on that a bit: although this is indeed a common fixed expression in the whole-phrase form given here, the verb also comes up, similarly negated with 안, in other figurative expressions of the form "X Y에게 안 먹힐 것이다" = "I don't think X will wash with Y, I don't think Y will swallow X", where X is some sort of excuse or dubious claim.

I'm sure kenjoluma is correct in explaining 씨 as 'weft', but I'd assumed myself, without any basis at all, that this was something to do with spinning rather than weaving. A 씨아 in Korean is a "cotton gin", a machine for separating the seeds (the more common sense of 씨 in Korean) from a bole of raw cotton before spinning the actual threads. And 씨아에 솜을 먹이다 is "to feed raw cotton into a gin". So I jumped to the false conclusion that the literal sense was that this was a metaphorical allusion to a bole of cotton that the gin wouldn't process. Just goes to show show the perils of "popular etymology" especially when applied to a language which is far from being one's native tongue.


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## 경상남도로 오이소

저는 "씨도 안먹히는 소리"라고는 안하고, "씨알도 안먹히는 소리"라는 표현을 자주 씁니다. (둘 다 맞는 표현입니다.)


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