rock-paper-scissors (source:wikipedia)

Do you know what is one of the most common things you can see around the world regardless of countries? It is a simple game, called rock-paper-scissors. In Korea, we call it, kauwi-bauwi-bo.

Let me do some anatomy of this expression here! We all know what rock, paper and scissors are.

One point lesson here! You should always use plural for scissors because there is no scissor. It is sometimes hard to remember to use plural form for these kinds of words, especially in speaking. The other examples that you need to use plural always are glasses and pants.

OK! Back to the anatomy! The order in Korean is different. “Kauwi” means scissors and “bauwi” means rock. And, I think, “bo” means sheet of cloth. If I translate it based on its order, it becomes “scissors-rock-cloth.”

I was very curious about its origin. Chinese people invented the first version of this game, called Chung-Gwon(蟲券) in the 17th century. And, the current version of the game was invented by Japanese people in the 19th century. And, finally, this game became so popular in the other countries in the 20th century. Interestingly, Japanese people used paper instead of cloth and that is why it became rock-paper-scissors. But, for some reason, when Korean people learned this, they replaced “paper” with “cloth” and Chinese people learned the new version of the game from Korea.

Korean people use this in so many occasions. For example, if you are at home with your family and you are about to watch a movie together but all of the people want to eat some snacks, then, they play this game to decide a person who should go to a store to buy some snacks. Or, if you are about to play a soccer game and you have 10 people, then we play this game to decide the teams (Winner team vs. Loser team). I mean each of 2 people play the game separately. So, there are 5 rock-paper-scissors games happening at the same time.

To be honest, I have not seen American people playing this game a lot. Hey, my friends! When do you play this game? And, if you are from some other countries, could you let us know whether you guys also play this game or not? Very curious!

FYI, there is a lot more information on Wikipedia.