Chinese Character Wiki
苦

kǔ

bitter

Phonosemantic compound. 艹 represents the meaning and 古 represents the sound.

Components
艹 meaning component

艹  Meaning component

cao, cǎo

  

grass

艹 is a component form of 艸.

古 sound component

古  Sound component

gǔ

  

old

Evolution

苦 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
苦 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
苦 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

苦  

kǔ

bitter; hardship, suffering; hardship; pain; to suffer; to bring suffering to; painstakingly

Most common words with 苦
Freq.
Word
Meaning

痛苦

pain

苦

bitter

辛苦

hard

艰苦

hard

苦难

suffering

Component uses

Meaning component in 1 character (0 verified)

楛

Sound component in 1 character (0 verified)

楛

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*kʰˤaʔ

khuX

kǔ

bitter


Statistics

HSK level 4

Appears in 54.3008% of movies

780th most common character in movies

634th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

8

Unicode

U+82E6

Shuowen

“苦，大苦，苓也。从艸，古聲。”


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