苟活

Mandarin · pinyin gǒu huó

Meanings

  1. to live without dignity; to barely sustain oneself
Full entryShow on map

Characters in this entry

苟
gǒu · careless, frivolous; illicit; grammatical particle: if, but, if only; surname; grass name
活
huó · live, exist, survive; lively
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

Explore the spelling

Mandarin tones

3–2 · gou3 huo2

Compare attested words with these syllables ↗

Dictionary tones. Connected speech can change their realization.

Connected dictionary

2character links
Explore word families ↗Compare pronunciations ↗Open character structure ↗
Counts describe dictionary records, not word frequency or semantic similarity. Source identities stay separate.
Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 1 sense

Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

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

verb

  1. to live without dignity; to barely sustain oneself

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

Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source & license · Data pack