Dictionary › 坎坷

坎坷

kǎn kě

HSK 3.0 level 7-9 2-character word

坎坷 (kǎn kě) means "(of a road) bumpy; (of life) rough; to be down on one's luck; to be full of frustrations and dashed hopes". It is an HSK 3.0 level 7-9 word, and was not on the old six-level HSK list.

What 坎坷 means

1. (of a road) bumpy; (of life) rough; to be down on one's luck; to be full of frustrations and dashed hopes

The characters in 坎坷

• 坎kǎnpit; threshold; one of the Eight Trigrams 八卦
• 坷kēused in 坷垃

Words starting with 坎坷

• 坎坷不平kǎn kě bù píngpotholed and bumpy road (idiom); fig. full of disappointment and dashed hopes
• 坎坷多舛kǎn kě duō chuǎnfull of trouble and misfortune (usu. referring to someone's life)

Words containing 坎坷

• 命途坎坷mìng tú kǎn kěto have a tough life; to meet much adversity in one's life

Sounds the same

Read kǎn kě, tone for tone, but written differently.

• 𫐘轲(literary) variant of 坎坷

Go deeper

• The four tones and the neutral tone, to read kǎn kě correctly.
• Look up another word in the free dictionary.