够呛
goù qiàng · HSK 7
unbearable
😩 够 (enough) + 呛 (choke) = choked past the limit, unbearable
够 means enough/sufficient and 呛 means to choke or irritate the throat. Together the compound literally reads as choked beyond what one can take, so it expresses something unbearable, awful, or barely likely to happen.
够 — 句 (phonetic) + 多 (semantic 'much')
够 is a semantic-phonetic compound. 多 ('many, much') gives the meaning of sufficiency or abundance, while 句 (gōu/jù) supplies the sound. Originally written 夠 with the same parts reversed, it came to mean 'enough' or 'sufficient' in modern usage.
呛 — mouth radical 口 + 仓 (cāng, storehouse)
A semantic-phonetic compound. The mouth radical 口 signals a meaning tied to the throat or act of swallowing, while 仓 supplies the sound (cāng → qiāng/qiàng). It originally described choking when food or liquid goes down the wrong way, later extending to coughing from irritating smells or smoke.