疲惫不堪
píbèibùkān · HSK 7
Exhausted
😮💨🔋 疲惫 weary + 不堪 cannot-bear = worn out past what you can endure
疲惫 (píbèi) means fatigued or weary; 不堪 (bùkān) means cannot bear or unbearably. Stacked together they push past plain tiredness to total exhaustion. 不堪 also tags other words as overwhelming, as in 不堪重负, unable to bear the load.
不 — single pictograph; bird flying upward
Originally a pictograph in oracle bone script, traditionally interpreted as a bird flying up toward the sky and unable to come down, suggesting negation or refusal. Over time it became the standard negation word in Chinese, used before verbs and adjectives to mean 'not'.