긔ᄌᆞ

Etymology
From, ultimately derived from or at least cognate to the Baekje form. The vowel quality of the second syllable is probably an irregular sound shift caused by conflation with Chinese, Middle Korean reading.

The existence of the Old Korean ancestor is implied by a quotation in the , the official history of the Goryeo dynasty (918—1392), that the ninth-century priest made a comment alluding to kingship by referring to the millet plant. The quote in the Goryeosa states that the words for "millet" and "king" sounded similar in the Korean language of the time. "Millet" in Middle Korean is.

Noun

 * 1)  king, ruler

Usage notes
긔ᄌᆞ is not found in any running text, suggesting that it was extremely rare or unknown in at least the Seoul dialect which represents the vast majority of the Middle Korean corpus. It only appears in various editions of the 1575 Gwangju cheonjamun, a Korean version of the Chinese poem  with a Middle Korean gloss for each Chinese character, where this word is used to gloss Chinese. The Middle Korean glossing tradition is known for linguistic conservatism, and this word may have survived due to this.

Alternatively, the Gwangju cheonjamun was published in, a southwestern city which was formerly the territory of the kingdom of Baekje. Therefore, it may reflect a dialectal form which survived in the ancient lands of Baekje.

The conventional Middle Korean gloss for is, which is also attested commonly in running text and is still found in Korean as. Interestingly, the Gwangju cheonjamun still glosses the Chinese words, , , and as 님금. In East Asia, rulers of the title are politically subordinate to rulers of the titles  and, suggesting that 긔ᄌᆞ  may have referred to a specific sort of ruler who was subordinate to a supreme sovereign. (In conventional Korean glosses,, , and are all glossed as 님금 without distinction.)