The Subject Honorific -(으)시-: Honoring the Subject

Korean respect runs on two independent systems, and separating them is the single most important move in the whole honorifics module. One system — the speech levels — encodes respect for the person you are talking to, and lives in the sentence-final ending (see the six speech levels). The other — the subject honorific -(으)시- — encodes respect for the person the sentence is about, and lives in the middle of the verb. This page is about the second system. Get the "about, not to" distinction clear now and a whole class of errors never forms.

What -(으)시- does and where it goes

-(으)시- is an infix: it slots in between the verb or adjective stem and the ending, and it raises the grammatical subject — the one performing the action or holding the state — to show respect. Strip a verb down to stem + -(으)시- + ending and you can see the layering:

• 읽다 → 읽 (stem) + 으시
  • 다 → 읽으시다 ("[an honored person] reads")
• 가다 → 가 (stem) + 시
  • 다 → 가시다 ("[an honored person] goes")

The dictionary-style form is stem + -(으)시- + -다, but in real sentences -(으)시- carries whatever ending the situation needs. In this everyday 해요체 sentence it fuses with -어요 (that fusion has its own page, -(으)세요):

Note it works on descriptive verbs (adjectives) too — you can honor a subject who is simply in a state, not doing anything:

The allomorphy: -시- vs -으시-, and the ㄹ-drop

Which shape you use depends entirely on the stem's final sound — the same vowel/consonant split you already know from other endings.

The vowel/consonant split is mechanical: a consonant stem needs the buffer vowel 으 so the ㅅ doesn't crash into the preceding consonant (읽 + 으시 → 읽으시), while a vowel stem attaches -시- directly (가 + 시 → 가시).

The ㄹ-stems are the trap. A stem ending in ㄹ drops the ㄹ before -시-, because -시- begins with ㅅ, and Korean ㄹ-stems shed their ㄹ before the ㄴ/ㅅ/ㅂ/오 family of suffixes. So 살다 ("live") becomes 사시다, 알다 ("know") becomes 아시다, and 만들다 ("make") becomes 만드시다 — the ㄹ vanishes entirely rather than taking a buffer 으. (This is the general ㄹ-stem behavior; see ㄹ-stem verbs.)

The heart of it: -(으)시- is about the subject, not the listener

Here is the reframing English speakers most need, and it is genuinely alien to English. In English, politeness attaches to how you address someone — you are polite to a person. Korean's -(으)시- does something English never does: it marks respect for whoever the sentence is about, completely independently of whoever you are speaking to.

Concretely: you can be chatting in the most casual 반말 with your best friend and still put -시- on the verb — because the honored person is your grandmother, who is the subject of the sentence, not your friend, who is merely the listener.

Those two sentences honor the identical subject with the identical -시-. What changes between them is only the addressee ending: casual 오셔 (오시- + -어) to a friend, formal 오십니다 to an audience. The subject-honorific layer and the addressee layer are turning independently, like two dials on the same verb.

께서 travels with -(으)시-

When the subject is someone you honor, Korean also tends to upgrade the subject particle 이/가 to the honorific 께서. It is not strictly obligatory, but 께서 and -(으)시- are natural companions — where you see one, you usually see the other.

That last example shows -(으)시- riding the copula 이다 (이시다 → 이세요). Details of 께서 are on 께서, the honorific subject particle; note also that a handful of verbs replace themselves with a special honorific stem — 자다 → 주무시다, 있다 → 계시다, 먹다 → 드시다 — rather than just adding -시-. Those are on 계시다.

Indirect honorification: raising the subject's belongings

A subtler use that native speakers rely on constantly: when the grammatical subject is a body part, possession, or attribute of the honored person, -(으)시- attaches to that predicate. You honor the person by honoring what is theirs. This is called 간접높임 (indirect honorification).

There is a real boundary here, and overshooting it produces the notorious 사물존대 ("object over-honorification") error — the plague of Korean customer service, where staff put -시- on inanimate merchandise. The rule: 간접높임 is licensed only for things intimately part of the honored person (their body, their time, their name, their family). A coffee, a size, a price is not part of the customer, so it takes no -시-. The details and the full list of these errors are on object over-honorification.

Common Mistakes

1. Honoring yourself. You raise the subject, and you are never your own honored subject. Attaching -시- to a verb whose subject is 저/제가 ("I") is the most frequent -시- error of all.

The dedicated page on this is never honor yourself — it is worth reading in full, because the instinct to add -시- "to be polite" is strong and wrong.

2. Treating -시- as all-purpose politeness. -시- is not a politeness sprinkle you add to any respectful sentence; it specifically raises the subject. If the subject isn't someone you're honoring, it doesn't belong there.

3. Dropping -시- when the subject is honored. The flip side: when you talk about your grandfather or your boss with a plain verb, you fail to give the respect the subject is due.

4. 사물존대 — honoring objects. In service Korean you constantly hear -시- pinned onto merchandise. It is grammatically wrong and increasingly criticized, because a coffee is not a person.

Key Takeaways

• -(으)시- is an infix that raises the subject — the doer or state-holder — for respect: -시- after a vowel stem (가시다), -으시- after a consonant stem (읽으시다), with ㄹ dropping (살다 → 사시다).
• It tracks who the sentence is about, not who you're talking to. You can honor your grandmother with -시- even in the most casual 반말 with a friend.
• The honorific subject particle 께서 habitually travels with -시-, and a few verbs use special honorific stems (주무시다, 계시다) instead of plain -시-.
• 간접높임: -시- can raise the subject's body, time, or belongings (손이 크세요) — but not distant objects, which is the 사물존대 error.
• You are never your own honored subject — never put -시- on a verb whose subject is 저/제가.