苦
kǔ HSK3

bitter

苦 kǔ
hardship adjective
misery, pain, or difficult circumstances in life

他从小吃了不少苦。

tā cóng xiǎo chī le bù​shǎo kǔ.

He has suffered a lot since childhood.

bitter adjective
having a sharp, pungent taste like that of unsweetened cocoa or quinine

这种药味道很苦。

zhè zhǒng yào wèi​dao hěn kǔ.

This medicine tastes very bitter.

painstakingly adjective
with great effort, diligence, or intensive persistence

他苦钻研了五年，终于取得了突破。

tā kǔ zuān​yán le wǔ nián, zhōng​yú qǔ​dé le tū​pò.

He studied hard for five years and finally made a breakthrough.

to cause suffering verb
to bring hardship, misery, or distress to someone

这场大雨可苦了那些没带伞的人。

zhè cháng dà​yǔ kě kǔ le nà​xiē méi dài sǎn de rén.

The heavy rain was hard on those who didn't bring umbrellas.

to suffer adjective
to undergo or experience physical or mental pain or distress

他一直为病痛所苦。

tā yī​zhí wéi bìng​tòng suǒ kǔ.

He has been suffering from illness and pain.

Frequency
Character
Written text
634th most common 326.6 per million
Movie subtitles
780th most common 161.5 per million appears in 54% of films
Word
Movie subtitles
22.8 per million appears in 10% of films
Written text
77.1 per million

Details
HSK 2.0
Level 4
HSK 3.0
Level 3
Strokes
8
Unicode
U+82E6

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