Keep the sentence beside your search box

You read 선생님에게 뜻을 물었어요. and search for 물었어요. A headword search may give no result, even though the sentence is ordinary Korean. Or you find a word that looks close and choose the first English meaning, only to discover that it does not fit the sentence.

This Korean self-study lesson shows a more reliable sequence: keep the original sentence, propose a dictionary form, compare its forms and meanings, then return to the sentence. You will use the National Institute of Korean Language’s free Basic Korean Dictionary in English. The method also helps when using other dictionaries, although their labels and search features differ.

You should already recognise common polite and past endings. If you need a refresher, read the polite verb forms and past-tense lesson. This page teaches a lookup process, not a rule that every unfamiliar form can be solved by deleting the same letters.

Move through four checks

1. Read around the word. Who is acting, what object appears, and what is happening?
2. Separate an ending you recognise. For a verb or descriptive predicate, look for the dictionary form ending in 다.
3. Check the actual entry. Confirm the part of speech, suitable sense, forms and sentence pattern.
4. Test the result in context. Write a natural English meaning for the whole sentence and check that its participants still make sense.

For a straightforward example, 먹었어요 leads to 먹다. The past polite ending is not part of the dictionary headword. By contrast, removing only 요 from 먹었어요 leaves 먹었어, which is still a conjugated form.

For an irregular form, the visible stem may change too. In the asking example, 물었어요 connects to 묻다. You cannot discover that relationship by assuming every visible ㄹ must stay ㄹ in the headword. Use the sentence and the entry’s form information together.

Learn what the entry labels are telling you

The labels above were checked on the English dictionary pages for this lesson. Search tabs separate words from definitions and usage examples. When a full inflected form has no matching headword, an example search may still contain it; that does not make the headword search faulty.

In an entry such as 묻다³, the small raised number distinguishes dictionary entries with the same spelling. It is not a Korean tone number, a syllable count or a popularity score. A separate number inside the entry labels a sense within that entry. Those are two different numbering jobs.

The site may offer several translations for one sense. Read the explanation as well as the short English label. A list containing “ask” and “interrogate” does not mean that every friendly question should be translated as an interrogation.

Use 묻다 to see why the entry matters

The two dictionary entries have the same headword spelling, 묻다, but they do not use the same forms before a vowel-initial ending. For “ask,” the entry shows 물어 and 물으니. For “bury,” it shows 묻어 and 묻으니. Adding polite 요 to the displayed -어 form gives 물어요 or 묻어요.

The difference continues in the past forms: 물었어요 for asking and 묻었어요 for burying. Keep the sense attached to the form in your notes. A card saying only “묻다 = ask/bury” leaves out the very information you need when speaking.

Notice how the rest of each sentence supports the choice. A word’s meaning is something you can ask about. A box and the ground support the literal burying interpretation. If you changed only the English word while ignoring those relationships, you would lose the logic of the sentence.

The same conjugated form can lead to different headwords

Both sentences end in 물었어요. In the first, it is the past form of 묻다 in the asking sense. In the second, it comes from 물다 in the biting sense. The final form alone does not settle the lookup.

In the first sentence, 선생님에게 identifies the person asked, and 뜻을 identifies the meaning being asked about. In the second, 개가 is the acting animal, and 제 손을 is what was bitten. Read those clues before choosing a headword.

You do not need to memorise every sense of 물다 before continuing; find the sense that explains the sentence you are actually reading.

At the time this lesson was checked, searching 물었어요 among headwords did not produce a word result, while usage examples were listed separately. Search behaviour can change. The lasting skill is checking a candidate entry against the original sentence, even when a search tool offers a convenient suggestion.

Read a sentence pattern as labelled empty spaces

The asking entry includes the pattern 1이 2에/에게 3을 묻다. For the example below, choose the human-recipient option 에게:

The complete original practice sentence is 학생이 선생님에게 뜻을 물었어요. — “The student asked the teacher what it meant.” The number labels are placeholders. You replace them with the appropriate participants; you do not say “one, two, three” in the sentence.

The slash in 에/에게 shows alternatives in the pattern. It does not mean the particles are interchangeable with every noun. Here 선생님 is a person, so 에게 is the useful choice. More respectful forms such as 선생님께 can fit other contexts, but that is a further language choice rather than something the slot number alone decides.

Finally, distinguish spelling from the pronunciation guide. The entry may show 묻어 followed by [무더]. The brackets help you hear the connected sound. They do not instruct you to replace the spelling 묻어 with 무더 in ordinary writing.

Save one useful meaning with one useful form

A compact vocabulary note can have four fields:

• Source sentence: 선생님에게 뜻을 물었어요.
• Headword and chosen sense: 묻다 — ask for an answer or explanation.
• Form to remember: 물어요 / 물었어요.
• My new sentence: 친구에게 주소를 물었어요. — I asked a friend for the address.

That last sentence is a new example you produce, not one copied from the dictionary. It shows whether you can use the word with another suitable object. If the new sentence feels uncertain, mark it for checking instead of assuming that a fluent English translation proves the Korean is natural.

Save a link to the particular entry as well. It lets you return to the correct sense family without repeating the entire search. Then use the recall-and-review routine: hide the form, try to produce it, and check. A large collection of untested dictionary screenshots is less informative about what you can actually recall.

Stop when you have resolved the reading task. You can explore related words later. For this round, one verified meaning and one accurate new sentence are a useful result.

Check the lookup instead of guessing

A small listening check

Dictionary entries used in this lesson

• Basic Korean Dictionary: 묻다, asking — Compare the meanings, 물어/물으니 forms and participant pattern.
• Basic Korean Dictionary: 묻다, burying — Compare 묻어/묻으니 with the asking entry.
• Basic Korean Dictionary: 물다 — The biting sense explains the second 물었어요 example.
• Basic Korean Dictionary: 먹다 — A familiar eating verb to practise finding the headword.

Reviewed September 3, 2026. Found a mistake? Send a correction.

For another self-study round, choose one short sentence from a lesson you have already read. Look up one word, record the matching sense and form, and explain why you chose that entry. Keep the original sentence beside the result so you can check your reasoning later.