The buk in bukdoduda is neither the drum (북, 鼓) nor the north (北). It is a native Korean word for the soil banked around a plant's roots. When a plant in the field was shaken loose by wind and rain, or when its roots lay exposed, the farmer would scrape earth together with a hoe and heap it up around the base. This was called buk-eul juda, "to give buk," or buk-eul dodunda, "to raise the buk." Once soil covers the roots, the plant no longer topples; new fine roots reach out and it gathers strength again. The Standard Korean Dictionary gives the older form of the verb as butdododa, a form found in sixteenth-century texts. In other words, bukdoduda was not originally said of people at all — it was said to the ground. To lift another person's spirits, then, is not to pile something on from outside, but to quietly gather the soil back around their roots so that they can stand on their own.