아프시다 (apeusida) — The One-Syllable Difference for When the Person in Pain Is Your Elder
아프시다
아프시다 (apeusida) is the verb 아프다 (apeuda) with the honorific ending -(으)시- (-(eu)si-) attached to it. You use it to speak about someone’s pain — of body or of heart — when that person is someone you’re expected to show respect to. Put crudely: 아프다 (apeuda) is the word for you and your friends, and 아프시다 (apeusida) is the word for parents, teachers, bosses, and elders.
The places this word actually gets spoken are fairly fixed. The moment in a hospital waiting room when you take an elder’s arm and ask where it’s bothering them. The moment on a weekend evening when you call your parents to ask whether their back is still bad. The moment at work when you carefully say something to a team lead who looks pale. Korean learners meet 아프다 (apeuda) in their first week, but it takes a long time before they can really use 아프시다 (apeusida) — because this word holds not just a meaning but a relationship. It tells you who is in pain, and in the very same breath it tells you where that person stands in relation to the speaker.
Korean honorifics split into two branches that move independently of each other. One raises the listener (-요, -습니다), the other raises the subject of the sentence (-(으)시-). Once you grasp that these two operate separately, 아프시다 (apeusida) sorts itself out all at once.
- 동생이 아파. (dongsaeng-i apa) — Neither listener nor subject raised. Telling a friend about your younger sibling.
- 동생이 아파요. (dongsaeng-i apayo) — Only the listener raised. Telling your teacher about your younger sibling.
- 할머니께서 아프셔. (halmeoni-kkeseo apeusyeo) — Only the subject raised. Telling a friend about your grandmother.
- 할머니께서 아프세요. (halmeoni-kkeseo apeuseyo) — Both raised. Telling your teacher about your grandmother.
If the third sentence feels strange, that’s normal. It’s casual speech, yet -시- (-si-) is sitting right there in it. You’re speaking comfortably to a friend while still elevating your grandmother — and Koreans say sentences like this several times a day.
The conjugations break down like this. 아프세요 (apeuseyo) — they’re in pain right now; 아프셨어요 (apeusyeosseoyo) — they were in pain; 아프시겠어요 (apeusigesseoyo) — sympathy, “that must hurt a lot”; 아프신 곳 (apeusin got) — the spot that hurts; 아프셔서 (apeusyeoseo) — because they’re in pain; 아프시대요 (apeusidaeyo) — relaying it secondhand, “I hear they’re in pain.” At the hospital and on the phone, these six are just about all you need.
One more thing. -시- (-si-) also attaches when the thing in pain isn’t a person but a body part. In “할머니께서 무릎이 아프세요” (halmeoni-kkeseo mureup-i apeuseyo), the grammatical subject in pain is the knee, but because that knee belongs to the body of someone you must respect, the honorific follows along. This is called indirect honorification. Knee, back, throat, wrist, eyes — if it’s attached to an elder’s body, the same rule applies.
Seeing It in Real Conversation
Scene: Saturday morning, the waiting room of a neighborhood orthopedic clinic. Jun-kyung has brought his father in and is waiting to check him in when Emily walks in with a bandage around her wrist.
Jun-kyung: 어, 에밀리? 너 손목 왜 그래. 어디 아파? Oh, Emily? What’s wrong with your wrist? Does it hurt somewhere?
Emily: 어제 자전거 타다 넘어졌어. 근데 너는 멀쩡해 보이는데? I fell off my bike yesterday. But you look fine?
Jun-kyung: 나 말고. 아버지가 무릎이 좀 아프셔서 모시고 왔어. Not me. My dad’s knee has been hurting, so I brought him in.
Emily: 아, 아버님. 안녕하세요. 많이 아프세요? Ah, sir. Hello. Does it hurt a lot?
Jun-kyung: (작게) 한 달째 아프시다면서 계속 참으셨나 봐. 어제야 말씀하시더라. (quietly) Seems he’s been putting up with it for a month, saying it hurt. He only told me yesterday.
Emily: 어른들은 진짜 다 그러시더라. 우리 시아버지도 똑같아. Elders are all like that, seriously. My father-in-law is exactly the same.
These Uses Sound Off
✗ (asking to leave work early) 팀장님, 제가 오늘 배가 좀 아프세요. ✓ (asking to leave work early) 팀장님, 제가 오늘 배가 좀 아파요. → -(으)시- (-(eu)si-) raises the subject of the sentence. Here the subject is 제가 (jega, “I”), so attaching -시- (-si-) means you’ve just elevated yourself with your own mouth. The single syllable you added to sound polite is exactly what makes the sentence odd. Raising the listener is already being handled by -요 (-yo), and that’s plenty.
✗ (talking about a grandfather who has been hospitalized for a long time) 할아버지께서 요즘 많이 아프세요. ✓ (talking about a grandfather who has been hospitalized for a long time) 할아버지께서 요즘 많이 편찮으세요 (pyeonchaneuseyo). → The first sentence isn’t wrong, but its temperature is too light. 아프시다 (apeusida) suits pain that has a location and a moment — 무릎이 (mureup-i, “the knee”), 목이 (mog-i, “the throat”). When you’re speaking about an elder’s illness as a whole, something they’ve been carrying for a long time, 편찮으시다 (pyeonchaneusida) lands far heavier and more respectfully. This is the one to lead with when you visit someone in the hospital.
Example Sentences by Situation
1. When your boss looks unwell at work
팀장님, 혹시 어디 아프세요 (apeuseyo)? 안색이 안 좋으신데 잠깐 쉬셨다 하시죠.
Asking about a superior’s physical condition is delicate in a Korean workplace. Saying “you look sick” outright is an easy way to be rude, so this shape — 혹시 (hoksi, “by any chance”) in front, 어디 (eodi, “somewhere”) to keep the body part vague, and 아프세요 (apeuseyo) to close — is used almost like a fixed formula.
2. A weekend evening check-in call to your parents
엄마, 허리는 좀 어떠세요? 지난주에 아프시다고 하셨잖아요. 병원은 다녀오셨어요?
This is the skeleton of a check-in call. Parents will generally say they’re fine, and the child, not believing that answer, asks one more time whether they’ve been to the doctor. Repeating back what they said last time — 아프시다고 하셨잖아요 (apeusidago hasyeotjanayo) — is the signal that says “I remembered.”
3. Passing news along to a third person
오늘 수업 없대요. 선생님께서 목이 아프셔서 (apeusyeoseo) 병원에 가셨다고 하시네요.
Here it’s neither you nor your listener who’s in pain, but someone who isn’t in the room. The teacher still has to be elevated, so -시- (-si-) stays alive, and it attaches to 가셨다 (gasyeotda, “went”) later in the sentence too. Within a single sentence, it’s natural to attach -시- (-si-) to every action performed by the person you’re respecting, without skipping any.
Related Expressions in Honorific and Plain Speech
| Expression | Tone & weight | Where it’s used |
|---|---|---|
| 아프다 (apeuda) | Neutral; the base form | Yourself, friends, people younger than you. For yourself, always this form |
| 아프시다 (apeusida) | Everyday honorific | Specific pain in a parent, boss, or elder. Hospitals, check-in phone calls |
| 편찮으시다 (pyeonchaneusida) | The most polite and the heaviest | An elder’s illness overall. Hospital visits, holiday greetings, occasions close to news of a death |
| 몸이 안 좋으시다 (momi an joeusida) | Indirect and soft | When naming the illness would be awkward; when relaying someone’s absence at work on their behalf |
In practice it divides like this. To ask where it hurts, 아프세요 (apeuseyo). To ask after someone’s general well-being, 편찮으신 데는 없으세요 (pyeonchaneusin deneun eopseuseyo). To explain someone’s situation on their behalf, 몸이 좀 안 좋으셔서 (momi jom an joeusyeoseo) flows most smoothly.
Cultural Background — Elders Rarely Say They’re Sick
The 편찮다 (pyeonchanta) inside 편찮으시다 (pyeonchaneusida) is a contraction of 편(便)하지 아니하다 (pyeonhaji anihada) — “to be not at ease.” Instead of saying outright that someone is sick, the language goes around it and says “they are not comfortable.” The reluctance to call an illness by its name directly is fossilized in the word itself. That habit of not speaking plainly about pain is still very much with us. Korean elders will hardly ever be the first to say they hurt. The scene where someone endures it for a month until their child notices and takes them to the doctor is a drama cliché and, at the same time, something that genuinely happens in most households. That’s why it comes to feel almost like a duty for the child to be the one who asks first: 어디 아프세요 (eodi apeuseyo) — “does something hurt?”
There’s a counterexample that always comes up alongside indirect honorification: “주문하신 커피 나오셨습니다 (jumunhasin keopi naosyeotseumnida)” — “your coffee has come out,” with the honorific attached to the coffee — which you hear constantly in cafés. Coffee is not a target of respect, and it isn’t part of the customer’s body either, so this kind of object-honorific is regularly cited as the classic example of misused honorifics. By contrast, the -시- (-si-) in “어머니께서 손목이 아프세요” (eomeoni-kkeseo sonmog-i apeuseyo) is legitimate, because the wrist belongs to the mother’s body. A wrist qualifies, coffee doesn’t — that boundary line is the whole of indirect honorification.
One more note: in Korea, the hospital waiting room is one of the places where generations mix most often. The child handles the check-in while the parent sits and waits, and if the patient is elderly, the doctor naturally uses 아프시다 (apeusida). In dramas too, when a scene moves to an exam room, the doctor’s opening line is usually a sentence asking where and how the patient is uncomfortable. Learn this expression, and the dialogue in hospital scenes starts coming through whole.
Today’s Quiz
Which of the following sentences sounds off?
① 부장님, 혹시 어디 아프세요? (Sir, does something hurt, by any chance?) ② 저 오늘 좀 아프세요. (I’m a bit sick today.) ③ 할머니께서 무릎이 아프시대요. (I hear my grandmother’s knee hurts.)
See the answer
Answer: ②
-(으)시- (-(eu)si-) is an ending that raises the subject of the sentence. In ②, the subject is 저 (jeo, “I”), so attaching -시- (-si-) turns it into a sentence where the speaker elevates themselves. 저 오늘 좀 아파요 (jeo oneul jom apayo) is the correct form. ① is fine because the subject is 부장님 (bujangnim, the department head), and ③ is fine because the aching knee belongs to the grandmother’s body, so indirect honorification applies.
Definitions and example sentences are from the National Institute of Korean Language’s Basic Korean Dictionary (krdict.korean.go.kr); that portion of this post, including our translations, is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 KR.