The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors of expanding meanings of ‘먹다’ and the aspects of how advanced Korean learners recognize polysemy ‘먹다’. For this purpose, the various meanings of ‘먹다’ were examined by frame theory, cultural model and idealized cognitive model. This study suggests that advanced Korean learners should study vocabulary through recognizing cognitive structures of the language users. This will help the learners to recognize a frame as the macro structure while they learn the various extensive meanings of ‘먹다’. Dealing with overall meanings of a word according to the cognitive model theory is effective in that advanced Korean learners could understand Korean's way of recognition, cultural custom and potential meanings which evoke in various context.