평타 (Pyeong Ta)

평타 /Pyəng Tä/
Noun
-being at a mediocre level
-a normal attack in games

Collocation
치다 /chi dä/
Verb
- to hit sth.

Example
A: 어제 본 TV쇼 어땠어?
B: 평타 침 (ㅍㅌㅊ).

A: How was the TV show last night?
B: Not bad.
or It just hit the auto-attack. (when literally translated)

Origin
평타 originally refers to a normal attack(or auto attack) in video games. General game characters have various methods to attack enemies such as spells, skills, and normal attacks. Among these means of combats, auto attacks are considered to be the easiest and effortless in attacking strategy because all you need to do is right click the target. On the other hand, using spells (or skills) requires an amount of practice and experience.

Unfortunately, some players are so bad at a game that they can't even carry out normal attacks, so people started saying "I auto attacked at least," "you should be able to right click the enemy sigh," respectively in order to defend themselves from their terrible game plays or reprimand poor players for not even being able to be at mediocre level.

Practical Usage
Koreans, as many English speakers do, like to shorten words on the Internet. The rule is quite simple; Get rid of all the Hangul characters except for the first ones of each letters. For example, 평타 becomes ㅍㅌ in accordance with the mechanism. The most frequently used verb with 평타 is 치다, literally meaning hit. The infinitive form is 평타 치다, from which ㅍㅌㅊㄷ can be elicited.

Since ㅍㅌㅊㄷ still has a part of infinitive form, we need to find an adequate variation. Removing the last letter will lead you to the right answer, ㅍㅌㅊ.

Remember that Koreans' love for shortening words applies to verbs as well. They use "음슴체(Umsum Che)" - which I will make a posting about later - to transform complete sentences into noun phrases. They do it just because it's short and convenient.