Etymology
First attested as Core in the 1598 English translation of the 1596 Itinerario of Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, from the original Dutch Core, itself from Portuguese - according to van Linschoten's account.
Ultimately a sixteenth-century borrowing by Europeans from some variety of Chinese -.
These are Chinese pronunciations of Sino-Korean ^고려(高麗), Korea's official name between 918 and 1394 and still used by Chinese people to refer to the country for centuries thereafter; this itself being a shortening of 高句麗, an ancient Korean kingdom in the first millennium. Doublet of Goryeo, directly from Korean.
Some Korean authors claim an Arabic intermediary instead, but this is impossible because the actual medieval Arabic word for Korea was a variant of السيلى. [citation needed]
Pronunciation Proper nounA nation/and/peninsula in East Asia. Now divided into two sovereign states, commonly called South Korea and North Korea. - Short for the Republic of Korea (South Korea).
- (recently less common) Short for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea).
(historical) A dependency of Japan (1910–1945).
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