Korean slang profile
혼밥
honbap
Eating alone
Eating a meal by yourself.
- Expanded form
- 혼자 밥 먹기Eating alone
- Other spellings
- —
- Earliest source found
- Oct 31, 2016
- Documented trend period
- Around 2016~
This is the earliest source we have verified, not the date the term was coined.
01Examples, with English translations
- Example by Julimmal
오늘은 점심 혼밥했어.
I ate lunch alone today.
- Quoted from a source
혼자 밥 먹는다는 뜻의' 혼밥'[1]
'혼밥' which means eating alone
English translation by Julimmal.
02Documented history
- October 2016Yonhap News analyzed the amount of mentions on SNS and reported that the amount of mentions of words such as ‘Solple’, ‘혼술’, ‘혼밥’, and ‘혼놀’ increased by more than 10 times on average during the survey period. ‘혼밥’, which means eating alone, was unfamiliar enough to be mentioned only 6 times in 2010, but is said to have been mentioned about 6,000 times this year.[1]
03Origin & word formation
Combines 혼자, alone, with 밥, a meal. A 2016 Yonhap News article explicitly explains it as eating alone. Who first used it and when have not been verified.
Evidence for the origin explanationHigh
The article explicitly supports both the expansion and a change in how often the term was mentioned. Who first used it is unknown.
04Sources
Original titles and links are preserved. An English translation does not replace the original source.
- “힘든 인간관계보단 나홀로”…‘관태기’에 지친 사람들 (연합뉴스)Published Oct 31, 2016Original source checked Nov 5, 2026