King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “horrendous”

惨不忍睹
cǎn bù rěn dǔ
Traditional: 慘不忍睹
lit. so horrible that one cannot bear to look (idiom); fig. miserable; horrendous; atrocious

The closest CC-CEDICT match for horrendous is 惨不忍睹 (cǎn bù rěn dǔ), defined as: lit. so horrible that one cannot bear to look (idiom); fig. miserable; horrendous; atrocious.

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

惨 cǎn
miserable, wretched; cruel, inhuman
radical 61 ⼼ · 11 strokes
不 bù
no, not, un-; negative prefix
radical 1 ⼀ · 4 strokes
忍 rěn
to endure, to bear, to suffer, to tolerate
radical 61 ⼼ · 7 strokes
睹 dǔ
to look at, to gaze at; to observe
radical 109 ⽬ · 13 strokes

Traditional forms

Related words

Other words that share a character with 惨不忍睹.

WordPinyinMeaning
悲惨 (悲慘)bēi cǎnmiserable; tragic
惨案 (慘案)cǎn ànmassacre; tragedy
惨重 (慘重)cǎn zhòngdisastrous
惨遭 (慘遭)cǎn zāoto suffer (defeat, death etc)
惨败 (慘敗)cǎn bàito suffer a crushing defeat
惨烈 (慘烈)cǎn lièbitter; desperate
不是bù shìno; is not
不能bù néngcannot; must not
忍不住rěn bu zhùcannot help; unable to bear
目睹mù dǔto witness; to see at first hand

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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