Korean slang profile
CIY
ciy
Home decorating through personal choices
A way of decorating a home in which consumers choose its atmosphere, furnishings, construction methods, and similar details themselves.
- Expanded form
- Choose It YourselfChoose It Yourself
- Other spellings
- 시아이와이
- Earliest source found
- 2007
- Documented trend period
- Not verified
This is the earliest source we have verified, not the date the term was coined.
01Examples, with English translations
- Example by Julimmal
가구와 벽지 조합을 직접 고르는 CIY로 방을 꾸몄다.
I decorated my room through CIY, choosing the furniture and wallpaper combination myself.
02Documented history
- 2007The National Institute of Korean Language’s weekly new-word survey material introduced the spelling and meaning of “CIY”.[1]
03Origin & word formation
It takes the initial letters of Choose It Yourself. By analogy with DIY, making things oneself, it describes choosing interior-design elements oneself. This explanation was checked in the National Institute of Korean Language’s 2007 weekly new-word survey material. Who first used it and when have not been verified.
Evidence for the origin explanationHigh
The explanation and components in the body of the weekly material were directly compared. The original older articles re-quoted there and first use were not separately verified, and the date was recorded only to the precision of the verified source’s publication year.
04Sources
Original titles and links are preserved. An English translation does not replace the original source.
- 신어 조사 결과 (2007년 6월 3주) (국립국어원·국회도서관 보존본)Published 2007Original source checked Nov 14, 2026