Dictionary › 艰苦

艰苦

jiān kǔ

Old HSK 5 HSK 3.0 level 5 2-character word Traditional 艱苦

艰苦 (jiān kǔ) means "difficult". It is an HSK 3.0 level 5 word, and was HSK 5 in the old six-level list.

What 艰苦 means

1. difficult
2. hard
3. arduous

The characters in 艰苦

• 艰jiāndifficult; hard; hardship
• 苦kǔbitter; hardship; pain

Example sentences

• 生活很艰苦。
  Life has been very hard.
• 他们不怕艰苦的工作。
  Tāmen bù pà jiānkǔ de gōngzuò.
  They're not afraid of hard work.
• 这是一项艰苦的工作。
  This is painstaking work.
• 不管训练多幺艰苦，她都没有哭过。
  No matter how hard the training was, she never cried.
• 失业之后他捱过了一段非常艰苦的日子。
  Shīyè zhīhòu tā ái guo le yī duàn fēicháng jiānkǔ de rìzi.
  After losing his job, he went through a very difficult time.
• 这不公平！凭什么我必须做艰苦的工作。
  Zhè bù gōngpíng! píngshénme wǒ bìxū zuò jiānkǔ de gōngzuò.
  It's not fair! I have to do the hard work!

Words starting with 艰苦

• 艰苦奋斗jiān kǔ fèn dòuto struggle arduously
• 艰苦朴素jiān kǔ pǔ sùleading a plain, hardworking life (idiom)

Words containing 艰苦

• 备尝艰苦bèi cháng jiān kǔsee 备尝辛苦

Where 艰苦 is taught

In the GraphChinese course it is part of Courage, Determination & Hardship (HSK 5), each one a topic in the dependency graph of HSK 1–6 that opens only once its prerequisites are solid.

Go deeper

• Every HSK 5 word, with the rest of its level.
• The four tones and the neutral tone, to read jiān kǔ correctly.
• Look up another word in the free dictionary.