to hover between life and death (idiom); to suffer terribly; within an inch of one's life
trad. 死去活來
Also written 死去活來【sǐ qù huó lái】
Characters in this word
4死
Strokes: KanjiVG, CC BY-SA 3.0
to die, impassable, uncrossable, inflexible, rigid, extremely, damned
- Pinyin
- sǐ
- Strokes
- 6
- Frequency
- 113 of 2500
去
Strokes: KanjiVG, CC BY-SA 3.0
to go, to go to (a place), (of a time etc) last, just passed, to send, to remove, to get rid of, to reduce, to be apart from in space or time, to die (euphemism), to play (a part), (when used either before or after a verb) to go in order to do sth, (after a verb of motion indicates movement away from the speaker), (used after certain verbs to indicate detachment or separation)
- Pinyin
- qù
- Strokes
- 5
- Frequency
- 21 of 2500
活
Strokes: KanjiVG, CC BY-SA 3.0
to live, alive, living, work, workmanship
- Pinyin
- huó
- Strokes
- 9
- Frequency
- 1301 of 2500
来
Strokes: KanjiVG, CC BY-SA 3.0
to come, (used as a substitute for a more specific verb), hither (directional complement for motion toward the speaker, as in 回來|回来[hui2 lai5]), ever since (as in 自古以來|自古以来[zi4 gu3 yi3 lai2]), for the past (amount of time), (prefix) the coming ...; the next ... (as in 來世|来世[lai2 shi4]), (between two verbs) in order to, (after a round number) approximately, (used after 得[de2] to indicate possibility, as in 談得來|谈得来[tan2 de5 lai2], or after 不[bu4] to indicate impossibility, as in 吃不來|吃不来[chi1 bu5 lai2])
- Pinyin
- lái
- Traditional
- 來
- Strokes
- 7
- Frequency
- 33 of 2500