地獄

简 地狱 · 繁 地獄
Mandarin · pinyin dì yù

Meanings

  1. hell; underworld; (Buddhism) Naraka
  2. (coll.) (of humor, jokes, content etc) extremely dark or morally transgressive
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Characters in this entry

地
de · dì · earth; soil, ground; region
獄
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狱
yù · prison, jail; case; lawsuit
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

4–4 · di4 yu4

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Read this spelling in Classical texts

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.

地獄 · find source passages ↗ · 地狱 · find source passages ↗

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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

dei6 juk6

Cantonese word readings for 地獄. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

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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. (religion) hell; underworld; inferno
  2. (figurative) hell on earth

adj

  1. (Internet slang, neologism, of jokes, memes or gags) having a punchline that is built upon other's misfortune or disabilities, such that one would go to hell after comprehending the joke (see hellish gag); cursed

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

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

地獄 · di4 yu4
CC-CEDICT contributors and MDBG · edition 2026-10-13 · source line 25,134
Original dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source & transformation details
Exact source record地獄 地狱 [di4 yu4] /hell; underworld; (Buddhism) Naraka/(coll.) (of humor, jokes, content etc) extremely dark or morally transgressive/