South Korean won
- noun
- /saʊθ kəˈriːən wɒn/
:
won surcoreano
- I exchanged my euros for South Korean wons before traveling to Seoul.
Examples
-
When visiting South Korea, make sure to carry enough South Korean won for your expenses.
-
With the South Korean won getting 1,113 per USD and most everything costing only a few thousand won, I can't imagine busting your budget here.
Blog text (15) -
And it would be necessary to restructure foreign exchange markets so that traders seeking to buy, say, South Korean won for Thai baht could, before buying won, sell baht for SDRs rather than for dollars.
Academic text (2009) -
The current exchange rate for the South Korean won is 1,113 per USD.
Synonyms
Money used in South Korea where one unit equals 100 jeon
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'won' is a currency and the modifiers 'South' + 'Korean' specify the country (South Korea) whose currency it is. This straightforward noun phrase structure and the cross-linguistic pattern of country + currency make the MWE immediately understandable to a B1 learner who knows the constituents.
Etymology
South Korean won gets its name from won, an old word meaning 'round'. People used this word because coins are round, so won came to mean 'money' for South Korea.
