🇰🇷 Korean Origins #50
Buddhist origin
무진장
so much it cannot be counted; inexhaustibly abundant
In Buddhism, the "inexhaustible treasury" (無盡藏) — the boundless virtue and truth of the Buddha that can never be drawn dry.
✍️ ONGO · 2026-06-06 · 5 min read
01

Origin Story

Era
Ancient era

Mujinjang (無盡藏) joins mujin (無盡, "never running dry") with jang (藏, "storehouse"). In Buddhism it was a profound philosophical term for boundless virtue — the dharma-meaning (法義) of the Buddha that no amount of practice could exhaust, truth without end. The Vimalakirti Sutra teaches that "to help the poor and suffering is itself to practice the mujinjang." Temples even ran a kind of public fund for aiding the needy, called mujinjae (無盡財) or mujinjang-won (無盡藏院); begun in the Tang dynasty, it flourished greatly in Goryeo. The name meant a storehouse that gives without ever running out. That deep philosophical and charitable sense has faded, and today only the notion of quantity — "an enormous amount" — remains. So when we say something is "mujinjang plentiful," we are quietly borrowing the boundless virtue of the Buddha.

A sacred word for the inexhaustible virtue of the Buddha has dwindled into the everyday phrase "an awful lot." The word lives on, but the philosophy inside it quietly slips away.

02

Meaning Evolution

1
Original meaning
The Buddha's virtue and truth that no practice can exhaust — a storehouse that gives without end.
2
Derived meaning
The charitable fund (mujinjae) run by temples; wealth that never runs dry.
3
Modern usage
An amount too vast to count.
03

How It Is Used

That library has a "mujinjang" of rare old books — more than you could ever count.

Work has piled up "mujinjang" high today, so it looks like I'll be staying late.

Deep in the mountains, the stars shone "mujinjang" bright, as if about to pour down.

04

Related Words

무궁무진
Both are Sino-Korean words built on the core idea of "never running out" (無盡).
점심
Of the same lineage — a profound Buddhist concept whose meaning lightened into an everyday word.
허다하다
Shares the sense of being very great in quantity.
05

Memory Hook

無 (none) 盡 (exhaust) 藏 (storehouse) → "a storehouse that never runs dry" → so abundant that no matter how much you take out, it never ends.

"From the sacred storehouse of the Buddha's inexhaustible virtue, we draw out just one phrase to use: "an awful lot.""

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