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苦不堪言

Mandarin · pinyin kǔ bù kān yán

to suffer unspeakable misery
indescribably painful
hellish

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Characters in this entry

苦: kǔ · bitter; hardship, suffering
不: bù · no, not; un-; negative prefix
堪: kān · adequately capable of, worthy of
言: yán · words, speech; speak, say; Kangxi radical 149

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

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Mandarin tones

3–4–1–2 · ku3 bu4 kan1 yan2

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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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Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 1 sense · 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

fu2 bat1 ham1 jin4

Cantonese word readings for 苦不堪言. 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.

phrase

(idiomatic) unspeakably painful; suffer unspeakably

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

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