Korean Language Asked by Charles Reis Ribeiro on August 24, 2021
What is this 속담 (어물전 망신은 꼴뚜기가 시킨다) supposed to mean? What is its literal meaning? From what I understand, it is sort of an equivalent of the English proverb "one bad apple spoils the bunch", but I am not sure about the meaning nuances. If possible, please give some usage examples.
어물전 망신은 꼴뚜기가 시킨다
It's a proverb in Korea which means "One bad person brings disgrace to his/her colleague/family/group."
To know it's literal meaning, we can divide the proverb into 3 parts :
어물전 : (魚物廛) fish stores (fishmongers) that existed in Chosun era.
망신시킨다 : to disgrace, to embarrass
꼴뚜기 : pencil squid
So we can interpret the sentence as :
"The pencil squid brings disgrace to the fish shop."
In Korean proverbs, 꼴뚜기(pencil squid) is often portrayed as someone(something) who does something that damages one's reputation or does something that doesn't get any respect from others.
one example would be "망둥이가 뛰니 꼴뚜기도 뛴다 (Pencil squid jumps when mudskipper jumps)" which can be used when we see someone who doesn't have his/her own belief.
This is because 꼴뚜기 is considered to be one of ugly creatures in Korea. When customers saw 꼴뚜기 in 어물전, they wouldn't buy it, and some customers even left the store because they didn't want to look at that ugly creature.
Some usage example of "어물전 망신은 꼴뚜기가 시킨다" would be :
So we can see the nuance of this proverb is very negative towards the subject.
Correct answer by pkeu on August 24, 2021
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