拼死拼活

Mandarin · pinyin pīn sǐ pīn huó

Meanings

  1. one's utmost
  2. (to fight or work) desperately hard
  3. to put up a life or death struggle
  4. at all costs
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Characters in this entry

拼
pīn · join together, link, incorporate
死
sǐ · die; dead; death
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

1–3–1–2 · pin1 si3 pin1 huo2

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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.

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Compare dictionary sources 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

ping3 sei2 ping3 wut6

Cantonese word readings for 拼死拼活. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

CanCLID contributors · CC BY 4.0 · source & license · Data pack

拼死拼活 · pin1 si3 pin1 huo2
CC-CEDICT contributors and MDBG · edition 2026-10-13 · source line 46,744
Original dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source & transformation details
Exact source record拼死拼活 拼死拼活 [pin1 si3 pin1 huo2] /one's utmost/(to fight or work) desperately hard/to put up a life or death struggle/at all costs/