The sound of scraping a gourd dipper was, at first, no mere nagging but a life-or-death spell. In the late Joseon period, cholera raged under names like goejil ("the strange plague"), horyeolja, and jwitong, killing thousands upon thousands in a single year. With no medicine and no vaccine, people believed the disease spirit (byeonggwi) that carried the sickness hated loud, jarring noise. So in house after house, they turned a gourd dipper upside down on a small tray and scraped it — deuk, deuk, deuk — with a fingernail or a spoon. They trusted that the disease spirit, worn down by that grating, nerve-fraying sound, would flee, and the sick would recover. Whole villages filled with the scraping of gourds all through the night. Even after the plague withdrew, the memory of that hateful sound lingered, and so the grating, endless stream of nagging that wears on the ears came to be called "scraping the gourd." A desperate sound meant to hold off death survived as the everyday irritation of nagging.