What 길 means
A route, then a way forward. 길 names a physical road or path; it can also mean a method, duty, or course in life.
Hangul, the Korean writing system, was created in 15th-century Joseon, a Korean dynasty, to make Korean easier to write. The 1447 text Yongbi eocheon'ga records the earlier spelling 긿; 길 is its later written form.
Why can 길 mean “on the way”?
A verb pattern marks a trip in progress. In 는 길이다, 길 means someone is “on the way”; 는 길에 means “while en route.” The tilde marks where the verb goes.
In Korean road addresses, 길 is romanized as -gil—the road-name element written in Latin letters. South Korean official guidance dated 2024-12-19 uses this form.
Neutral Korean word; grammar and surrounding words show whether the route is physical or figurative.
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Who writes 길
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Related characters
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How to type or find 길
- Also called
- gil · kil
- Search it as
- road · path · street · route · way · address
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
길\AE38Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.