The talking stage — something is happening but you are not dating.
The entire grey zone before a relationship gets one short noun. You 타다 (ride) a 썸 — 썸 타는 중 means "we’re in that stage". It is the engine of roughly every romance drama plot.
Clipped from the English "something". Korean needed a noun for the in-between and borrowed one.
Casual and gossipy. Perfect with friends, odd in front of family.
Reading a definition isn't the same as saying it to someone. Lingo Kaiava is a voice tutor set to Korean — it uses 썸 the way locals do, corrects you in the moment, and never "fixes" the way real people actually talk into textbook Korean.
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