惨
cǎn HSK6

sad

惨 (慘) cǎn
disastrous adjective
catastrophic or to a severe and crushing degree

他在这次股市崩盘中赔得很惨。

tā zài zhè cì gǔ​shì bēng​pán zhōng péi de hěn cǎn.

He suffered heavy losses in this stock market crash.

miserable adjective
wretched, tragic, or causing great suffering

这些难民的生活过得太惨了，连饭都吃不上。

zhè​xiē nàn​mín de shēng​huó guò de tài cǎn le, lián fàn dōu chī​bu​shàng.

These refugees are living in such miserable conditions they can't even afford food.

dim descriptive
gloomy, dismal, or pale in color or light

阴风惨惨，吹得人心里发毛。

yīn​fēng cǎn cǎn, chuī de rén xīn​li fā​máo.

The bleak wind was so chilling it made one's hair stand on end.

cruel adjective
inhuman, savage, or brutal

那个歹徒的杀人手段太惨了，真是令人发指。

nà​gè dǎi​tú de shā​rén shǒu​duàn tài cǎn le, zhēn shì lìng​rén​fà​zhǐ.

The murderer's methods were so brutal that they were truly appalling.

Frequency
Character
Written text
1,530th most common 68.8 per million
Movie subtitles
1,448th most common 47.6 per million appears in 25% of films
Word
Movie subtitles
31.4 per million appears in 13% of films
Written text
23.1 per million

Details
HSK 2.0
Level 6
HSK 3.0
Level 6
Traditional
慘
Strokes
11
Unicode
U+60E8

Sources
Definitions
CC-CEDICT
Frequency data
MTSU Chinese text computingSUBTLEX-CHBCC Corpus (BLCU)