Hangul syllable silh

It marks dislike or refusal, usually inside a full Korean word.

In modern Korean, 싫 is the stem in 싫다, which means to dislike something or not want to do something. 싫어 is casual and direct; 싫어요 is polite. So 싫 by itself is a piece of a word, not a fixed Korean equivalent of “no.”

The documented ancestor of modern 싫다 is Middle Korean 슬ᄒᆞ다, which appears in the Korean text Seokbo sangjeol in 1447. Hangul, the Korean alphabet, was created in 1443. Hunminjeongeum, a guide to the new writing system, was published in 1446 to make writing Korean more accessible than using Chinese characters.

How is 싫 pronounced in 싫다 and 싫어?

The ending changes the sound.

In 싫다, final ㅎ makes the following ㄷ sound like the breathier ㅌ, giving [실타]. Before the vowel ending 어 in 싫어, ㅎ drops and ㄹ carries into the next syllable: [시러].

Unicode can represent 싫 as one syllable block or as its equivalent sequence of four Hangul letters; normalization, a text-standardization step, can treat those forms as equivalent. Fonts may draw the block differently, but that does not change its Korean pronunciation.

Should I send 싫 by itself?

Use a complete form suited to the relationship.

싫어 is casual and direct; 싫어요 is polite but still conversational. A message to a senior, stranger, or work contact calls for a complete polite sentence because Korean verb endings signal the relationship.

The plain form 싫다 suits dictionary entries or commentary better than a direct casual reply. Between close friends, a complete form can be blunt without being hostile; context decides whether the dislike is about a thing, an action, or a plan.