I learned this four-character idiom from my building’s elevator last night. I might learn more idioms if I took the elevator more often. But I would get less exercise. And there are other places to find four-character idioms.
求之不得
구지부득
gu.ji.bu.deuk
seek-go-not-get
This was hard to figure out the meaning. I’m not totally confident. There is no entry for the idiom in the Korean-English online dictionary, but the Korean-only dictionary gives (for the verbalized form, 구지부득하다): “구하려고 해도 얻지 못 하다,” which the googletranslate renders “Even trying to save is not obtained.” That’s not that helpful on seeing the meaning. I had better luck googling it as if it were Chinese. In an online Chinese-English dictionary, I found it is an idiom meaning “to be exactly what one has been looking for.” I could kind of see that, but it’s not clear to me that the Korean usage has the same meaning, or if the Korean usage is more negative, which would be more simply, to try to find but fail to find something.
In which case, I tried to find the exact meaning of this idiom, but failed.
[daily log: walking, 6km]