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Mythic Mandarin

苦 (kǔ): meaning and stroke order

苦 (kǔ) means bitter, hardship, pain, to suffer, to bring suffering to, painstakingly.

苦

Simplified
苦
Traditional
苦 (same form)
Pinyin
kǔ

Stroke order of 苦

苦

  • kǔ bitter; hardship
  • 8 strokes

Stroke by stroke

Meaning of 苦

  1. kǔ
    • bitter
    • hardship
    • pain
    • to suffer
    • to bring suffering to
    • painstakingly

Radical and structure

苦
Radical 艸 (Kangxi radical 140) · 9 strokes · 艹 on top, 古 below

Radicals and stroke counts: Unicode Unihan database. Structure: the shapes a character is written with (BabelStone IDS), not necessarily parts that carry meaning or sound.

Words with 苦

苦 in our stories

Preview version — Chinese review in progress.

  • 方明要了两杯很苦的咖啡。

    Fāng Míng yào le liǎng bēi hěn kǔ de kāfēi

    Fang Ming ordered two cups of very bitter coffee.

    From the story The first date HSK 2

  • 他离开家,到处拜师学本领,吃了很多苦,却从来没有想过放弃。

    tā líkāi jiā dàochù bài shī xué běnlǐng chī le hěn duō kǔ què cónglái méiyǒu xiǎng guò fàngqì

    He left home and sought teachers everywhere to learn their skills. He went through great hardship but never once thought of giving up.

    From the story Splitting the mountain to save his mother HSK 5

Stories using 苦

Dictionary data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0). Stroke data: Hanzi Writer data, derived from Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License). Animation: Hanzi Writer (MIT licence). Radicals and stroke counts: Unicode Unihan (Unicode License v3).