吃苦
chī kǔ · HSK 7
to bear hardships
😣 eat + bitter — to eat bitterness is to endure hardship
吃 means eat, 苦 means bitter. Chinese culture equates swallowing something bitter with enduring suffering. If life hands you something bitter, you chew through it anyway.
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.'
苦 — grass radical 艹 + 古 (old)
Originally referred to a bitter-tasting plant, with the grass radical 艹 indicating its botanical nature and 古 providing the phonetic element. The meaning extended from the literal bitter taste to figurative senses of hardship, suffering, and painful effort.