#88. 하드캐리 -- Playing the hero

When people start introducing foreign language into their own language, mistakes invariably happen. For example, apple pie à la mode should mean "fashionable apple pie" but we use it to mean "apple pie with ice cream." And what about words like maître d' which makes no sense in French?

When I hear the Korean word "하드캐리," I feel that this is a bunch of mistranslations rolled into a single word. This word is often used in gaming communities (it is said that this word originated from League of Legends), to describe someone who played a crucial role in leading the team to victory. Its verb form is "하드캐리하다."

So for example, you can say:

"이번 게임은 니가 하드캐리했다." (You pretty much won this game for us.)

 This usage within a game has been expanded into various other situations in life. For example, if a particular comedian is full of hilarious 드립 and makes an entire episode of the entertainment clip alive, then you can also say:

"이번회는 그 코메디언이 완전 하드캐리했네." (That comedian really made this episode.)

The origins of this word is admittedly a bit random. It seems that this word has English as its origin, as in "hard carry." The word "carry" comes from the newspaper articles that sound like this:

While the word "carry" is not an essential part of headlines such as this, it seems that the Korean gamers decided to focus on the word, and brought it over to Korean. So in the Korean gamer language, it means "to lead to victory."

There are a couple of hypotheses about the word "hard." One says that it is supposed to be an adjective to "carry" to emphasize it, so "hard carry" should mean that someone really lead the team to victory. Another hypothesis says that this used to refer to the team members who were weak at the beginning, but became stronger (=hard in the Korean mistranslation... oops!)

As far as its usage goes, it seems that most young-ish people tend to understand it, as it sometimes even makes an appearance as the subtitles of entertainment shows. With the older generation, however, it may just lose its meaning, although it is in no way offensive.