[How to Konglish]DIY(Do It Yourself) Expressions

As we all love DIY(do it yourself), I would like to post about DIY expressions.
DIY expressions can be covered all because there’s nothing you cannot do by yourself! But this time I will focus on simple home tools and works.

Bond(본드, 뽄드)

=> Glue
Since we love to make things simple, we call every type of glue as ‘Bond’. It can be super glue, epoxy glue, two component glue and etc. And actually ‘Bond’ does bonding work so it makes sense anyway.

Angle(앵글)

=> Angle bar
It’s very useful to utilize a small space. Although some Koreans use the Konglish: Angle, todays we don’t use it often.
Because they are used for making a shelf or a table usually, but smart marketing guys make the shelf for DIY and the table for DIY and then we don’t need to use the word that much.

Concent(콘센트)

=> Electrical outlet / socket
It was shortened from ‘Concentric plug’ by Japanese. They say ‘Con-cen-to’ and Koreans have better sense of English than them I believe, we say ‘Con-cen-t’.

Poclain / po-c(포클레인, 포크)

=> Excavator
When a shovel is not enough, we need an excavator. In Korea, we don’t have any excavators but we have ‘Po-c’ or ‘Poclain’.
‘Poclain’ is or was the french manufacturer of excavators and was the world-leading company. So I guess when it came in first, maybe people called ‘Poclain excavators’ however even for me it isn’t easy to pronounce ‘excavators’ properly. So it was removed.. and by some busy men, ‘Poclain’ was abbreviated as ‘po-c’. And now even my 3 year old son calls it ‘Po-c’.

Driver(드라이버)

=> Screw driver
Bye for Screw to shorten all.

McGyver Knife(맥가이버)

=> Swiss Army Knife
McGyver movie series hit so big in 1990s in Korea I remember. I was also a big fan of him and he used the Swiss Army Knife to do almost everything. So we thought the knife had to be followed his name. Anyway the generation changed now, many young people in Korea don't know who McGyver is.. thus I think.. it's kind of old-fashioned.

Trans(Do-ran-s, 도란스)

=> Transformer
Every 'Trans' is from trans-blah-blah and they can be meant many other things but this time it's transformer(electric).
We use 'Up trans' for 'Step up transformer' and 'Down trans' for 'Step down trans'.
And old guys, they pronounce trans 'Do-ran-s'.