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The origin of garaetteok lies in garae, a native Korean word for a length of rice cake or taffy drawn out long and round, joined to tteok, "rice cake." Garaetteok is white rice cake drawn out thin, round and long and cut to a set length. Urimalsaem, the open dictionary of the National Institute of the Korean Language, defines garaetteok as "white rice cake drawn out into a thin cylinder and cut to a set length," and garae as "a length of rice cake or taffy drawn out long and round." It is the garae used in counting: one garae of rice cake, two garae of taffy. The word is simply built. Garae names a shape and tteok names a food. If sirutteok, the cake that took the name of the steamer it was cooked in, is named for the way it is made, garaetteok is named for the shape it has once it is done. The same white cake shaped into flat rounds is not garaetteok; it must be drawn out long. Garae has several homonyms that need to be kept apart. There is the garae that names a long-handled tool for lifting and throwing earth, the garae that means phlegm, and the garae of tteok-garae. The dictionary treats them as separate words. Where the farming garae and the rice-cake garae parted is not established; there is only the conjecture that the word resembles galle, a word for something divided into long strands. This article does not set that conjecture up as fact, and starts instead from the dictionary's ground: the garae of rice cake names a long, round length. Q: What does garaetteok mean? A: White rice cake drawn out thin, round and long and cut to a set length. It is garae, the native word for a length of rice cake or taffy drawn out long and round, joined to tteok, a case in which the name of a shape became the name of a cake. How garaetteok appears in the written record must be sought in the records of white cake and tteokguk. The New Year section (元日) of the Dongguk sesigi (東國歲時記) of Hong Seok-mo (洪錫謨), from late Joseon, describing the foods of the first day, records that rice cake made by steaming non-glutinous rice flour, setting it on a great board, beating it countless times with a wooden mallet and drawing it out into long lengths was called white cake (白餠), and that this cake, sliced thin like coins, boiled in broth and finished with beef or pheasant and ground red pepper, was called tteokguk (餠湯); the original reads 蒸粳米粉置大板上以木杵有棅者無數擣打引作長股餠名曰白餠 因細切薄如錢和醬水湯熟 調牛雉肉番椒屑名曰餠湯 (after the Wikisource transcription). The same section passes on the saying that "adding a year" is called, in common speech, "having eaten so many bowls of tteokguk" (諺稱添齒者謂吃餠湯第幾椀). The first-month section of the Yeoryang sesigi (洌陽歲時記) of Kim Mae-sun (金邁淳) describes the same cake as "round in body and long, like the leg of an octopus" (體團而長如八梢魚股) and calls it gwonmo (拳模), so that in both almanacs the drawn-out shape sits inside the gloss on the name. What deserves notice here is the name. The Dongguk sesigi does not write garaetteok for the cake drawn out long; it writes 白餠, white cake. Garaetteok was a native word hard to set down in characters, so the almanac written in classical Chinese named the cake by its colour and put its shape into the description. The sense of garae lives inside that phrase, "drawn out into long lengths." Choe Nam-seon (崔南善), in his Joseon sangsik (朝鮮常識), took New Year tteokguk for a very old custom and held that the dish came to be made of white cake so as to meet the new year clean (as summarised in the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture entry on tteokguk). The name white cake speaks of colour, the name tteokguk of use, and the name garaetteok of shape. Three names lie over one cake, and the one that survived in speech and stands today on the signboards of rice-cake shops is garaetteok. There are traditional readings of the shape of garaetteok: that drawing it out long expresses a wish for long life, and that slicing it round like coins expresses a wish for plenty. These are widely told readings, not words set down in the sources. Yet since the Dongguk sesigi chose to liken the sliced shape to coins, it can be read that the eye which saw money in the round slices of tteokguk was already there. A reading of the white colour as the cleanness of the new year is also passed on. Garaetteok is the cake of the New Year, but today there is one more day in November that calls its name. Q: What is the origin of Garaetteok Day? A: It is a day set beside Farmers' Day, 11 November, for sharing garaetteok made from Korean rice. Why 11 November became Farmers' Day is explained by the characters: 十一 stacked one above the other forms 土, earth, and the sense of farming, born of the earth and returning to it, was placed on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The same date is widely known as a day for exchanging stick-shaped snacks, and Garaetteok Day, for sharing the long white cake, set one more place for rice beside it. Urimalsaem lists Garaetteok Day as "a name for 11 November, set in 2006 by the agriculture ministry on Farmers' Day to encourage the use of home-grown produce." The way of eating on this day is to grill a whole length of drawn-out white cake, unsliced, and dip it in grain syrup. If tteokguk is the name of garaetteok after slicing, Garaetteok Day calls garaetteok itself, before the knife. The word garaetteok is still used as it is in rice-cake shops and mills. New rice is ground, steamed and extruded by machine into lengths that come out into cold water; left a day to firm and sliced on the slant they become tteokguk cake, and cut long as they are and stir-fried in red pepper paste they become tteokbokki cake. Tteokguk cake and tteokbokki cake are the same garaetteok cut in different directions. Garaetteok is a name born when garae, the native word for a long round length, met tteok. Between white cake, a name of colour, and tteokguk, a name of use, the name of shape survived to become the name of today. Garaetteok, "the cake drawn out long": a word in which the shape drawn by hand became the name itself.