Hangul syllable ddulg

By itself, it is a syllable block, not a complete word.

Hangul was designed to write Korean speech directly. Its letters, called jamo, combine into blocks with an initial consonant, a vowel and an optional final consonant. In 뚥-, the hyphen marks a verb stem—the part that takes endings—not part of the syllable.

A 2007 study records 뚥- as a local-dialect stem related to standard 뚫다, “to pierce or make a hole.” It traces the related verb’s written history to the 15th–16th centuries and describes later changes among stem forms toward standard 뚫다; this is the verb’s history, not evidence that 뚥 appeared alone then.

What does it mean when someone sends 뚥?

A lone 뚥 needs surrounding Korean text to identify the word.

In a dialect or historical-linguistics discussion, 뚥- points to the documented local stem related to 뚫다. In an unexplained message, the surrounding words are needed to tell what the sender intended.

How do I type 뚥?

In a Korean IME, enter ㄸ + ㅜ + ㄺ.

The IME combines the initial consonant, vowel and final consonant cluster into one block. If you have the conjoining-jamo sequence 뚥 separately, Unicode NFC normalization, which joins equivalent jamo sequences, can combine it into 뚥.