Caveat: 뺑끼

The word of the day:  뺑끼 (bbaeng-ggi).  I don't know what it means, exactly – my students seemed to feel it was important that I learn it – they emphasized the spelling of it and the emphatic pronunciation.  Sometimes I can't tell if they're pulling my leg, or messing with me in some way.  So I didn't just want to take their word for what it meant.

I couldn't find in the naver.com dictionary I use, nor was it in the dictionary in my phone.  I googled it, and found it in another online Korean dictionary called zKorean.  And also, it was in a long list of words titled:  "틀린 말 바른 말" (teul-lin mal ba-leun mal = "wrong talk right talk").  I'm assuming it's either slang or somehow not-quite-correct Korean.  The one dictionary said the meaning was "paint."  My students insisted the meaning was "lie" (as in, to tell a lie).  I could see how one meaning could shade into the other, in slang terms.

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