粗活

Mandarin · pinyin cū huó

Meanings

  1. unskilled labor
  2. heavy manual work
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Characters in this entry

粗
cū · rough, thick, course; rude
活
huó · live, exist, survive; lively
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

1–2 · cu1 huo2

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Follow a written form into the eight pinned witnesses: Analects, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Han Feizi, Sunzi and the Mao Shijing. A match is a place to investigate; it does not prove that a modern dictionary sense fits the passage.

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Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

Independent source senses for this spelling, with usage labels retained. Not matched to the pronunciation above.

noun

  1. heavy manual labor; unskilled work

Source page · dump 2026-09-02 · Contributors & history

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