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I've heard '마음을 먹다' translated as to 'make up one's mind' or to 'have a mind' (to do something).
Is it neutral in feeling, or does it imply hiding or deadening one's emotions in preparation for doing something unpleasant?
Also, how does the metaphor of 'eating' your mind/heart work? can it be compared to any other similar ____을 먹다 expressions?
As regards metaphor, you can see how little of it remains in 마음을 먹다 (if metaphor it ever was) by noting the unavailability of the following expressions:
마음을 들다.마음을 잡수다.
Compare 나이를 먹다, which can become, e.g.:
- 나이 드신 양반 (an aged gent)
- 선생님, 나이 헛잡수셨군요. (Sir, you've aged in vain--said of and to an older person acting foolishly.)
To start from the basics, 들다 and 잡수다 are the more respectful versions of 먹다 in the primary sense of to eat. (Thus children 먹다, but one's elders 들다 or 잡수다. Cf. animals feed, guests dine.) Because almost no sense of eating survives in 마음을 먹다, these other verbs cannot take the place of 먹다 in it.
먹으시다 may work (barely) if, for some rhetorical reason, you must use 마음을 먹다 for an elder.
선생님, 마음을 먹으셨으면 끝까지 해내셔야죠. (Sir, if you made up your mind, you should see it through to the end.)
However, using one of 결심하다, 작심하다, 작정하다 would be better. E.g.:
작심하셨으면 끝까지 해내셔야죠.
One usage requiring the exact nuance of 마음을 먹다 would be:
마음만 먹으면 못 할 일이 없다. (If only one is determined nothing is impossible--or literally, if only [missing subject] is determined, there is nothing [missing subject] cannot do.)
This you can say as a general truth, or to someone to encourage him, or of someone to mean that he is capable.
Replacing 마음만 먹으면 in it with e.g. 결심만 하면 would be perfectly grammatical but kill the poetry as it were.
Thus you might actually end up saying to an elder:
선생님께서 마음만 먹으시면 못 하실 일이 없을 것입니다. (If you, sir, only set your mind to it, nothing will be impossible, as spoken to the person in question; or if he only set. . . . as spoken of him to someone else.)
Similarly:
- 마음 먹기에 달렸다. (It depends on what one decides, or how one looks at it, or one's attitude.)
- 마음 먹기 나름이다. (Ditto.)
Otherwise, the degree of seriousness implied in 결심하다, 작심하다 or 작정하다 is perhaps not less than that in 마음을 먹다 or, if I had to put a number, 90% of the way.
Plain deciding is 결정하다 or 정하다.
마음을 먹다 is in a very strong sense. Since its literal meaning is "eat you heart", you could feel how strong it is.
So, unless you are 100% sure to have the resolve, use 결심하다 instead.
There are some other examples where 먹다 is not used to mean "eat" in English.
Example:
귀가 먹다 -> deaf
나이를 먹다 -> attain certain age(usually 45-60)
야심을 먹다 -> ambit(possess ambition)
I wanted to ignore this question because there were two answers. However, I don't understand what they are talking about...
'마음을 먹다' is not metaphor.
먹다 has a lot of meaning. In dictionary, There are two kinds of 먹다(먹다1, 먹다2)
먹다2 has the nineteen meanings.
(http://krdic.naver.com/detail.nhn?docid=13180000)
먹다2
1 .음식 따위를 입을 통하여 배 속에 들여보내다. (eat, drink or take, etc.)밥을 먹다. (eat a meal)
술을 먹다. (drink alchole)
약을 먹다. (take a medicine)4 .어떤 마음이나 감정을 품다.(make up one's mind/to have a mind)
세상일이란 마음 먹기에 달려 있다.(Success depends on what you have in mind)
한번 먹은 마음이 변하지 않도록 하자.(Sorry.. difficult to translate.)
마음 독하게 먹어라. (Sorry. difficult to translate.)
So it's not a metaphor. "마음을 먹다" literally means "to have a mind" by definition 4 (NOT definition 1).
When you study Korean, you have to know one word has a lot of different meanings.
I really surprised when I saw that the first answer had gotten 6 vote!!! Forget about "eat your heart." We never use "먹다" like that. Who can eat heart? You can find one in the movie "Saw" haha.
Please, reply if you have more questions.
As an extension/ giving examples to the TING CHOE's answer:
Think of 먼지 먹은 이불. The 먹다 here means "absorb and not let go." Same as in 먹을 먹은 붓.
마음을 먹다 is the exact same situation. 마음 is an intention. It just means that you hold onto an idea/ intention and not let go forever.
I don't know if this has to do with it but, by extension, the 먹다 in 귀먹은 장님 can mean he's absorbed too much stuff in the ear(s) so he's too damped to the extension of not being able to hear anything. Am I getting too creative here? Because I'm not one hundred percent sure here.
'먹다' in '마음을 먹다' is not a metaphor. It's just a right usage of a word. '먹다' can be a homonym, but in this case, it is just polysemy.
If you search a word and the dictionary categorizes word as '먹다1', '먹다2', those are two different words.(homonym)
If '먹다1' has more than two meanings (1) ~~ (2) ~~~, those words share similar context(or at least similar in fundamental way), but have different usage or meaning. (polysemy)
