痛苦
tòngkǔ · HSK 3
pain
😣 痛 = pain/ache + 苦 = bitter; together: bitter pain, suffering
痛 means physical or emotional ache; 苦 literally means bitter (like bitter taste) and extends to hardship. The compound stacks the two for intense suffering or anguish.
痛 — sickness radical 疒 + 甬 (yǒng, phonetic)
痛 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The 疒 radical depicts a person on a sickbed and signals illness or pain. The component 甬 supplies the sound, historically close to 'tòng'. Together they convey bodily ache, later extended to emotional pain and the adverbial sense 'thoroughly'.
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.