倒悬之苦 — Chinese idiom
倒悬之苦
dào xuán zhī kǔ
Traditional: 倒懸之苦
Meaning
- lit. the pain of being hanged upside down ; fig. extremely critical situation
- dire straits
Character by character
- 倒dàoto collapse, to fall over; to lie down
- 悬xuánto hang, to hoist, to suspend; hung
- 之zhīmarks preceding phrase as modifier of following ph
- 苦kǔbitter; hardship, suffering
Idioms sharing a character
- 倒悬之危 dào xuán zhī wēi
- 倒悬之急 dào xuán zhī jí
- 倒打一耙 dào dǎ yī pá
- 倒持泰阿 dào chí Tài ē
- 倒行逆施 dào xíng nì shī
- 倾箱倒箧 qīng xiāng dào qiè
- 排山倒海 pái shān dǎo hǎi
- 本末倒置 běn mò dào zhì
- 东倒西歪 dōng dǎo xī wāi
- 神魂颠倒 shén hún diān dǎo
Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.