吃力
chī lì · HSK 5
to entail strenuous effort
😮💨 吃力 = eat + strength; a task that 'eats' your energy
吃 (eat) + 力 (strength/effort). The task literally devours your stamina, so it's strenuous or laborious. Common in 很吃力 — 'really takes it out of you.'
吃 — mouth 口 + beg 乞
A semantic-phonetic compound: 口 (mouth) gives the meaning 'to eat,' while 乞 (qǐ, 'to beg') hints at the sound. The original character for 'eat' was 喫; 吃 first meant 'to stutter' but was later adopted as the standard simplified form for 'to eat.'
力 — pictograph of a plow or arm muscle
力 originated as a pictograph of an ancient plow, the main tool requiring physical exertion in early agriculture. Some scholars also see it as a flexed arm showing muscle. From this concrete image it broadened to mean 'strength, power, force, effort'.