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I was studying grammar from this site. I figured what き meant through the kanji, but I couldn't pinpoint what verb つく tsuku was.
Then I googled it and found a site where it says that 「に 気 が つく」 means "to have ki put onto you".
But I can't figure out the dictionary entry for つく.
Would anyone give me the dictionary definition along with the kanji for the same?
つく is just 付く "to stick/adhere/be attached [to]".
〇〇に気が付く can literally be interpreted as "to have one's attention be attached to (or focussed on) 〇〇". (Of course 気 is more profound than "attention".)
I think "to have ki put onto you" does not work as a literal translation. The thing that ki is "put onto" is not "you", but the thing that was noticed.
By the way, there is also a shortened version, written 気づく or 気付く.
(See Do 気が付く{つく} and 気[付く]{づく} have the same meaning?)
In both 気がつく and 気づく, the verb 付く is usually written in kana, but the kanji version is still quite common: In the Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese about one in five instances appears in kanji.
