Hangul Syllable Hib

The surrounding word decides its sense.

힙합 names hip-hop; 힙스터 means hipster, and 힙한 describes something stylish or distinctive. These related borrowed uses are not interchangeable.

The style sense borrowed from English “hip” is associated with Black American jazz culture in the 1940s. By the 1990s, “hipster” was a label for a non-mainstream lifestyle. By 2019, Korean cultural writing contrasted 힙 with 핫 (“hot”); they were not interchangeable.

Why is 힙 one square?

It groups three Hangul letters into one syllable block.

Hangul, the Korean alphabet, was designed to write Korean speech by grouping an initial consonant, a vowel, and sometimes a final consonant into a syllable block. In 힙, those parts correspond to ㅎ, ㅣ, and final ㅂ. The work introducing Hangul, titled 훈민정음, is recorded in 1443; its explanatory book appeared in 1446.

Unicode can represent 힙 as one precomposed character or as a sequence of conjoining jamo, the Hangul letters joined to form a syllable. Fonts may place those parts differently inside the block, but the text stays the same.