What 헛 means
It marks a result as fruitless or an action as ineffective or mistaken. 헛- comes before another Korean word: 헛수고 is effort in vain, 헛걸음 a wasted trip, and 헛디디다 means to misstep. With nouns, it describes an empty or fruitless result; with verbs, an ineffective or mistaken action. Alone, 헛 usually needs the rest of the word for its full meaning.
A historical analysis connects 헛- to 허 (虛, “emptiness”) plus ㅅ. Hangul texts from the 15th century onward make Korean word history clearer than earlier records, which often used Chinese characters.
헛- gives a compound a negative result: fruitless, empty, or mistaken.
헛소리 하지 말고 is a blunt rebuke: “stop talking nonsense.”
Part of the collection
Who writes 헛
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What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readingsThe effort or trip came to nothing.
Related characters
2
Questions people ask
1Why does 헛 show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
More like this
14
허Hangul Syllable Heo
헌Hangul Syllable Heon
헝Hangul Syllable Heong
헙Hangul Syllable Heob
헚Hangul Syllable Heobs
헜Hangul Syllable Heoss
ᄀHangul Choseong Kiyeok
ᄁHangul Choseong Ssangkiyeok
ᄂHangul Choseong Nieun
ᄃHangul Choseong Tikeut
ᄄHangul Choseong SsangtikeutHow to type or find 헛
- Also called
- 헛- · heot · heos
- Search it as
- 헛 · 헛소리 · 헛수고 · 헛걸음 · 헛디디다
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
헛\D5DBCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.