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Etymology data from Wiktionary via Wiktextract (CC BY-SA 4.0). Chinese character data from the 說文解字, the Taiwan MOE 國語辭典簡編本 (CC BY-ND 3.0 TW) and HSK/TOCFL lists.

Explanations are written by a local model (gemma4) and only published after a verification pass against the cited sources. How it works.

Chinese

苦

kǔ
bitter
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 3
  • radical 艸
  • 9 strokes

Etymology graph

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  • derived
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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *kʰaːʔ, *kʰaːs): semantic 艸 (“grass”) + phonetic 古 (OC *kaːʔ) – bitter (as in bitter plants).

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *kaʔ (“bitter; salty”); compare Tibetan ཁ (kha, “bitter”), Tangut 𗎖 (*khie¹, “bitter”) (STEDT; Jacques, 2014). Within Chinese, cognate with 肝 (OC *kaːn, “liver”).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*kaʔ “bitter; salty”
  • meaningChinese艸 “grass”
  • soundChinese古 “the past; ancient times”

Related: Tibetan ཁ, Tangut 𗎖

Words built on it: 痛苦, 辛苦

Meanings

character
  1. bitter
  2. difficult; painful; hard
  3. hardship; suffering
  4. dukkha
  5. excessive
  6. to cause someone suffering; to give someone a hard time

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

苦：大苦，苓也。从艸古聲。

Xu Shen, c. 100 CE — the first analytical dictionary of Chinese characters.

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 五味之一。似黃連、膽汁的味道。與「甘」、「甜」相對。 例：苦味、苦瓜、苦茶
  2. 艱辛、難受。 例：苦境、苦日子
  3. 比喻難以忍受的境況。 例：訴苦、受苦受難、吃苦耐勞
  4. 盡心盡力的。 例：苦勸、埋頭苦幹、寒窗苦讀
  5. 愁悶。 例：愁眉苦臉
  6. 受累、為難。 例：一家子的生活重擔都落在他的身上，真是苦了他了。

© Ministry of Education, Taiwan — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW, shown unaltered.

How 苦 was written 字形演變

  1. 苦 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  2. 苦 in Regular script
    Regular
    楷書
    since c. 200 CE

Historical forms collected by the legacy etymfun dataset; most characters have several attested variants.

Sources

  • Historical glyph forms (zdic.net 字形演变) — Rights unverified
  • HSK / TOCFL word lists — Facts (levels)
  • 教育部《國語辭典簡編本》 (Taiwan MOE) — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW
  • 說文解字 Shuowen Jiezi (Xu Shen, c. 100 CE) — Public domain
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 苦