8 Rat Idioms for the Year of the Rat!
I do love a good proverb. My favourite Korean one so far is 방귀 뀌는 사람이 화를 내다. Which of course means, ‘the one who farts is the one who gets angry!’
In other words, the one who makes the mistake then blames others rather than themselves! Yes, guilty as charged. (I’m sitting here alone chuckling to myself as we speak…)
My second favourite idiom is 남의 떡이 더커 보인다 = ‘the other man’s rice cake always looks bigger‘. It’s one of many idioms involving rice and the same meaning as the grass is always greener…This one’s great because I can use it so often!!
It’s fun finding new idioms, so to celebrate the YEAR OF THE RAT I’ve looked up some Korean expressions featuring rats! I found these expressions in the Dictionary of Korean Idioms and in the Naver Online dictionary.
The word rat in Korean (쥐) sounds like the letter G in English.
This came up in a legal case when a university lecturer was fined for drawing a rat on promotional posters for the G-20 Seoul summit: see the Lee Myung-bak poster incident.
8 RAT IDIOMS
number 1
독 안에 든 쥐 ‘a rat in a pot‘
Meaning: to be in a fix.
Traditional homes had large ceramic pots outside to contain soy sauce, salt, soybean paste etc. (See our family’s pots below)
If a rat gets stuck in one of those big ceramic pots, it’s going to be very difficult to get out! So this means to be in a fix. Like a rat in a trap.
Example sentence: 난 독안에 든 쥐 같은 느낌이었어요. ‘I felt like a rat in a pot‘.
Rats have been associated with diligence and wisdom and were a symbol of good luck.
And in idiomatic expressions, rats often represent nighttime. (while birds represent daytime). Here are a couple of idioms that express this idea:
number 2
낮말은 새가 듣고 밤말은 쥐가 듣는다.
‘Birds hear you in the day and rats hear you at night!’
Meaning: ‘Walls have ears!’
This expression, similar to the English one, reminds us that there might always be someone listening! So be careful. It’s a standalone expression really. And quite a longwinded sentence compared to the pithy English equivalent, but I love the image of the animals listening…
number 3
쥐도 새도 모르게 ‘so the rats and birds don’t know…’
Meaning: secretly
Here’s another expression with the rats and the birds. As well as night and day, the rats can represent all the animals on the ground (and the birds represent the air).
This idiom is used when you are doing something secretly, surreptitiously: so not even the rats or the birds can detect it, i.e. NO ONE must know.
Here’s an example sentence:
그는 쥐도 새도 모르게 사라젔다. ‘He vanished without a trace‘.
Literally, ‘he vanished without the birds or rats knowing about it‘.
I like that one.
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Some idioms don’t seem to make that much sense at first. Here’s one that needs some historical background information:
number 4
쥐꼬리 ‘a rat’s tail‘
Meaning: a small amount of something.
Example sentences from the Naver dictionary:
그는 그 일을 하고 보수는 쥐꼬리만큼 받는다. ‘He gets paid peanuts for that job‘.
Literally, ‘he only gets paid a rat’s tail for that job!
CULTURAL NOTE:
I didn’t get this expression at first. If it was a hamster’s tail, it might make sense. Or a guinea pig’s tail. (do guinea pigs even have tails?) But not a RAT. Surely a rat’s tail isn’t small. It’s creepily long!
This proverb needs more explanation and happily in the book, Dictionary of Korean Idioms, there’s a note that tells us how this expression came about:
Apparently, in the 1950s there was a growing rat problem in the country and so a campaign began to cull the rat population. Any child who brought a rat’s tail to school was given a pencil or notebook as a reward! (blimey, different times!)
Anyway, some kids cut the rat’s tail into lots of smaller pieces (as you would) to get more notebooks and pencils! Hence this expression! So it’s quite a recent one.
Now for some pathos. This expression is quite poetic and sad…
number 5
쥐 죽은 듯이 ‘like when a mouse dies‘
Meaning: ‘silent as a graveyard’
This one is used when it’s VERY quiet. Mice scratching around the house was a common sound in the past, so without even the sound of a mouse, it’s unusually quiet.
Example sentence from Naver dictionary: 극장 안은 쥐 죽은 듯이 고요했다. ‘There was a deathly hush in the theatre‘. Literally, ‘it was so quiet in the theatre as though even the mice had died‘.
Some idioms are similar to English ones…
number 6
물에 빠진 생쥐 ‘a house mouse that’s fallen in water‘
Meaning: ‘very wet indeed’
This one is pretty much the same as the English version describing someone who is soaked ‘like a drowned rat.’
Example sentence: 그녀는 물에 빠진 생쥐 꼴이었다. She was like a drowned rat.
number 7
쥐구멍에라도 들어가고 싶다 ‘I want to climb into a rat hole‘.
Meaning: to be embarrassed.
This one is pretty clear. It’s used when someone is embarrassed and they just want to hide away or climb into a hole! As in: ‘I wanted the ground to swallow me up!’
And here’s an interesting one to finish with…
number 8
소 뒷걸음질치 다 쥐 잡기 ‘a cow catches a rat while walking backwards‘
Meaning: a fluke!
Apparently, this one’s not used so much these days, but I like the image! It’s used when something good happens that is just blind luck. Something that happens by chance. A fluke. No skill involved!
Let me know if you are enjoying posts on idioms! Here are some more related posts:
Did you make a new year’s resolution? How’s it going? If you’re already struggling with it and ready to give up, here’s an idiom for you: chak shim sam il: short-lived resolutions!