Geuripda (그립다) Meaning: Missing, Longing and Homesick
Korean has one word for missing a person, a place, and a time that is gone.
4 min read
What 그립다 means
그립다 (geuripda) means to miss something deeply: a person far away, your hometown, your childhood, the way things used to be. It carries a little more longing than a plain "I miss you", and it works just as well for places and times as for people.
The verb form 그리워하다 is used when you describe someone else's feeling: 그녀는 고향을 그리워했다, "she longed for home."
그립다 vs. 보고 싶다
Both translate as "miss", but they are not the same. 보고 싶다 literally means "I want to see": it is what you text a friend. 그립다 is softer and deeper, closer to "long for". You can 그리워하다 something you can never see again, like a season of your life; 보고 싶다 doesn't stretch that far.
| Korean | Use | Natural English |
|---|---|---|
| 보고 싶어 | everyday, to a person | I miss you |
| 그리워요 | deeper, people or places | I miss… / I long for… |
| 집이 그립다 | missing home | homesick |
| 그리운 고향 | adjective form | dear old home, the home I miss |
| 그리움 | the noun | longing, nostalgia |
그립다 in real stories
Real lines from our library. Notice how many English words it takes to cover one Korean one.
- Mother Holle (A1): "But after a while she grew sad and missed her home." — 그런데 얼마 지나자 슬퍼졌고 집이 그리워졌어요.
- An Old-Fashioned Girl (A2): "…Polly felt homesick and cried a little." — 폴리는 집이 그리워 조금 울었어요.
- The Fairy and the Woodcutter (Korean folktale, B1): 선녀는 나무꾼에게, 하늘을 날던 그 시절이 그립다며… — "…the fairy told the woodcutter that she missed the days when she could fly…"
- The Tale of Chunhyang (Korean classic, B1): 춘향은 차디찬 감옥에서 몽룡을 그리워하며 하루하루를 견뎌 냈어요. — "…she endured her days in the cold cell, longing for Mongryong."
- Life on the Mississippi (B1): "I still mourn for that first, unconscious delight I felt in the river's beauty…" — 그 첫 순수한 기쁨을 지금도 그리워해요.
From homesick to mourn
Missed, homesick, missed, longing for, mourn for. Mark Twain's line is the one to remember: he misses a way of seeing the river that he can never get back, and Korean reaches for 그립다 without hesitation. That reach, to things that are gone for good, is what 보고 싶다 can't do.
Read it in context
The Tale of Chunhyang and The Fairy and the Woodcutter are Korean originals with English one tap away; tap a form like 그리워하며 and the dictionary still knows it. Browse all of them on the Korean literature shelf.
Put it into practice