King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “arduous”

艰难
jiān nán
Traditional: 艱難
difficult; arduous; hard

The closest CC-CEDICT match for arduous is 艰难 (jiān nán), defined as: difficult; arduous; hard.

Before using these characters for a tattoo, check them with a native speaker. Dictionary words often have several meanings, and the right choice depends on context.

Characters and stroke order

艰 jiān
difficult, hard; hardship
radical 138 ⾉ · 8 strokes
难 nán
hard, difficult, arduous; unable
radical 172 ⾫ · 10 strokes

Traditional forms

Other Chinese words for “arduous”

WordPinyinMeaning
辛苦xīn kǔexhausting; hard
艰苦 (艱苦)jiān kǔdifficult; hard
艰辛 (艱辛)jiān xīnhardships; arduous
繁重fán zhòngheavy; burdensome
吃重chī zhòng(of a role) arduous; important

Related words

Other words that share a character with 艰难.

WordPinyinMeaning
艰苦 (艱苦)jiān kǔdifficult; hard
艰辛 (艱辛)jiān xīnhardships; arduous
艰巨 (艱巨)jiān jùvariant of 艰巨 (jiān jù)
艰苦奋斗 (艱苦奮鬥)jiān kǔ fèn dòuto struggle arduously
困难 (困難)kùn nandifficult; challenging
难道 (難道)nán dàodon't tell me ...; could it be that...?
难以 (難以)nán yǐhard to (predict, imagine etc)
难过 (難過)nán guòto feel sad; to feel unwell

See also: Japanese symbol for “arduous”.

Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3); Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License (graphics.txt); LGPL-3.0-or-later (dictionary.txt)); wordfreq (CC BY-SA 4.0 (data)). Retrieved 2026-10-22.

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