Korean compound word piselkeci has the meaning of ‘to put things (esp. grains) away so they don't get wet when it rains.’ However, because it is rarely used these days, when its meaning is asked of, common responses are ‘to wash dishes with rainwater’ and ‘to clean the surroundings with rain.’ The paper demonstrates how the compound word piselkeci has its meaning, unlike the folk belief, from the perspective of cognitive semantics. The modifier pi ‘rain’ is extended to designate ‘due to rain’ through the metonymy EVENT FOR CAUSE. The profile determinant selkeci ‘dish-washing’ is extended to mean ‘taking care of things after a certain event’ by the HYPONYM FOR HYPERNYM metonymy and further to ‘taking care of things after an event.’ The paper also explains why most people misinterpret the meaning of piselkeci. They interpret pi ‘rain’ as an instrument or as an agent. In the former interpretation, pi is construed as ‘rain water’ through WHOLE FOR PART metonymy and, in the latter interpretation, it is construed as an inanimate agent which cleans the surroundings, which happens often when it rains.

The suffix -cil in Korean seems to take heterogeneous nouns as its bases. For example, sensayng 'teacher' in sensayngcil 'teaching' is an agent, kyeycip 'woman' in kyeycipcil 'womanizing' is a patient and kwayngi 'hoe' in kwayngicil 'hoeing' is an instrument. Therefore, the suffix -cil has been regarded as having various meanings. However, from the viewpoint of cognitive semantics, the various bases of the suffix -cil can be interpreted as consistently referring to an event through metonymy. In sensayngcil 'teaching,' the base sensayng 'teacher' refers to an event through AGENT FOR EVENT metonymy. An agent has a conceptual contiguity with the whole event because it is one element of the event. Similarly, the patient, keyecip 'woman' in keyecipcil 'womanizing,' and the instrument kwayngi 'hoe' in kwayngicil 'hoeing,' as participants of an event, refer to the whole event by the PATIENT FOR EVENT metonymy and the INSTRUMENT FOR EVENT metonymy, respectively. Close examination of -cil suffixation reveals that all the elements in an event can be a base of -cil suffixation because each of them metonymically refers to the whole event. Therefore, it can be concluded that, from the viewpoint of cognitive semantics, seemingly different meanings of the suffix -cil can be unified to one when the different bases consistently interpreted as an event through metonymy.