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煞費苦心

简煞费苦心 · 繁煞費苦心

Mandarin · pinyin shà fèi kǔ xīn

to take a lot of trouble (idiom); painstaking
at the cost of a lot of effort

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Characters in this entry

煞: shā · malignant deity; baleful, noxious; strike dead
費: Look up this written character
苦: kǔ · bitter; hardship, suffering
心: xīn · heart; mind, intelligence; soul; 5th lunar mansion, determinative star α Scorpii (Antares)
费: fèi · expenses, expenditures, fee

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

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Mandarin tones

4–4–3–1 · sha4 fei4 ku3 xin1

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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.

煞費苦心 · find source passages ↗ · 煞费苦心 · find source passages ↗

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Compare dictionary sources 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

saat3 fai3 fu2 sam1

Cantonese word readings for 煞費苦心. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

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