DICTIONARY · CC-CEDICT

命途坎坷

Mandarin · pinyin mìng tú kǎn kě

to have a tough life
to meet much adversity in one's life

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Characters in this entry

命: mìng · life; destiny, fate, luck; an order, instruction
途: tú · way, road, path, journey; course
坎: kǎn · pit, hole; snare, trap; crisis; trigram ☵; hexagram ䷜
坷: kě · clod of earth, lump of soil

Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

4–2–3–3 · ming4 tu2 kan3 ke3

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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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