Caveat: 어리버리하다

My boss earlier was talking about me to another teacher, in Korean. I understood only fragments of what he was saying, but, as will happen when someone is talking about you, I was trying hard to understand. Eventually I interrupted, saying, "what?" and interjecting myself into the conversation, because I was feeling self-conscious.

One phrase he was using was using was "어리버리한" [eoribeorihan] which would be a derived participle of a verb form ending in -하다. He was at a loss to explain what this word meant in English, and at the time the best I could puzzle out was that it meant vague or hazy. He was using it to describe the way that I was when he first met me. Recall that my current boss has been my boss before – he was in 2008 at LinguaForum. So he's seen my evolution in my latest career as EFL teacher in Korea for most of its length.

I decided to try to puzzle out the meaning of this word he was using to describe me, but it's not a dictionary word as best I can figure out. One slang entry I found says it means "sucker." The google agreees. Another slang entry I found says "someone who is easily taken advantage of." This would make it like the English word "rube," maybe.

I think what Curt was meaning was that I was insecure in my teaching, and not showing a lot of confidence. Since the word was being applied to me, I might charitably prefer to translate it as something like "newbie" or "newb."

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