Hangul syllable Sab

삽 names the digging tool.

For soil, sand, or snow, it is a hand tool for digging or scooping. In 한 삽 (“one shovel-load”), it measures the amount lifted by one shovel.

A Korean history entry cites a first-century Chinese account of shovel use in Korea, repeated in Wang Zhen’s 1313 Nongshu, a farming manual. A 1527 dictionary records 삽 as a reading for 鍤, an older Chinese shovel character. Hangul was created in 15th-century Korea to write Korean. Excavators spread in the 1970s, reducing the shovel’s practical role.