Chinese word dictionary

吃亏

chīkuī · to suffer losses; to come to grief; to lose out; to get the worst of it; to be at a disadvantage; unfortunately

Practice word

Word information

Simplified吃亏

Traditional吃虧

Pinyinchīkuī

Part of speech动

HSK 3.07-9

HSK 2.05

Character breakdown

Study each Hanzi separately, then return to the complete word so pronunciation, meaning, and movement stay connected.

吃chī

to eat; to drink; to suffer, to endure, to bear

亏kuī

to lose, to fail; loss, damages; deficient

How to learn 吃亏

Listen once without reading, repeat the pinyin with its tones, then write every character in sequence. Finally, recall the complete meaning instead of memorizing each character as an isolated translation.

When the word appears in a sentence, check whether its part of speech and meaning match the definition shown here. Chinese words can change nuance with context.

Related vocabulary

Words with the same characters

Compare how a familiar Hanzi changes meaning inside another word.

吃chī

to eat; to consume; to eat at (a cafeteria etc); to eradicate; to destroy; to absorb; to suffer (shock, injury, defeat etc); variant of 吃[chi1]

好吃hǎochī

tasty; delicious

吃惊chījīng

to be startled; to be shocked; to be amazed

小吃xiǎochī

street food; snack

亏kuī

to lose (money); to have a deficit; to be deficient; to treat unfairly; luckily; fortunately; thanks to; (used to introduce an ironic remark about sb who has fallen short of expectations)

大吃一惊dàchī-yìjīng

(idiom) astounded; flabbergasted; taken aback