煞费苦心 — Chinese idiom
煞费苦心
shà fèi kǔ xīn
Traditional: 煞費苦心
Meaning
- to take a lot of trouble ; painstaking
- at the cost of a lot of effort
Character by character
- 煞shàdemon, fiend; baleful, noxious
- 费fèiexpenses, fees; to cost, to spend; wasteful
- 苦kǔbitter; hardship, suffering
- 心xīnheart; mind; soul
Idioms sharing a character
- 凶神恶煞 xiōng shén è shà
- 煞有介事 shà yǒu jiè shì
- 白费唇舌 bái fèi chún shé
- 费尽心思 fèi jìn xīn si
- 费尽心机 fèi jìn xīn jī
- 铺张浪费 pū zhāng làng fèi
- 不胜其苦 bù shèng qí kǔ
- 倒悬之苦 dào xuán zhī kǔ
- 备尝辛苦 bèi cháng xīn kǔ
- 刻苦耐劳 kè kǔ nài láo
Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.