DICTIONARY · CC-CEDICT

食荼臥棘

简食荼卧棘 · 繁食荼臥棘

Mandarin · pinyin shí tú wò jí

to eat bitter fruit and lie on thorns (idiom); to share the hard life of the common people

Full entryShow on map

Characters in this entry

食: shí · eat; meal; food; Kangxi radical 184
荼: tú · thistle, sowthistle; bitter
臥: Look up this written character
棘: jí · jujube tree; thorns, brambles
卧: wò · lie down; crouch

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

Explore the spelling

Mandarin tones

2–2–4–2 · shi2 tu2 wo4 ji2

Compare attested words with these syllables ↗

Dictionary tones. Connected speech can change their realization.

Connected dictionary

4character links

Explore word families ↗Compare pronunciations ↗Open character structure ↗

Counts describe dictionary records, not word frequency or semantic similarity. Source identities stay separate.

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.

食荼臥棘 · find source passages ↗ · 食荼卧棘 · find source passages ↗

Explore Classical grammar ↗