Gyeotda is unfamiliar today because it rarely stands alone, but its original meaning is clear enough. To gyeot is to weave strips of bamboo, reed, or bush clover so that warp and weft cross over one another. Baskets, straw carriers, blinds, and floor mats all came out of that motion of the hands. From it branched a second sense — "to hook or lay things across each other so they will not come loose or fall over" — and when that sense moved onto the human body, the phrase eokkae-reul gyeotda was born. Stand side by side, lay your arms crosswise over each other's shoulders, and the two of you sway far less than either would alone. A single reed snaps between your fingertips; woven crosswise, the same reeds make a mat that will not give way under a seated man. The verb is a ㄷ-irregular, so it inflects as gyeolgo, gyeoreoseo, gyeoreuni. Because those forms are awkward, many people now say eokkae-reul geolda instead.