Hangul syllable sol

Read the word around it, or the music.

On its own, 솔 can mean a cleaning brush, a pine tree, or the sol note in solfège. 칫솔 means toothbrush, while 솔잎 and 솔숲 point to pine; a scale or melody signals the music sense.

The pine sense is literary or poetic; 소나무 is the more common everyday word.

How did 솔 become a Hangul block?

It is a regular Hangul syllable block, not a picture of a pine.

Hangul was designed to make writing Korean easier to learn than the Chinese-character system then in use. Its creation was completed in 1443; an explanatory book describing its letters and syllable assembly appeared in 1446.

A 1459 Buddhist text, Worin seokbo, records both the brush and pine words in Middle Korean, an older form of the language. That gives a written milestone, not the date either word first entered speech.

Where does the pine meaning of 솔 appear?

The pine sense has both a literary and a card-game setting.

In hwatu, a Korean card game, 솔 names the pine suit associated with January; this convention is documented as of 2023. The same syllable also names a solfège degree, one of the sung labels for notes in a scale; solfège syllables appear in traditional Korean singing too.