Definition

1. Adjective:

   • Humbled and suffering: A state of feeling deeply humiliated, ashamed, or degraded while simultaneously enduring hardship, misery, or poverty. It conveys a profound sense of wounded pride combined with material or emotional suffering.

2. Noun:

   • Hardship and humiliation: The condition or experience of a life filled with privation, shame, and degradation.

Usage Examples

• Adjective:

  • Cuộc sống tủi cực của người mẹ đơn thân. (The humbled and suffering life of the single mother.)
  • Cảm thấy tủi cực vì bị đối xử bất công. (To feel humiliated and miserable because of being treated unfairly.)

• Noun:

  • Họ đã trải qua bao tủi cực. (They have endured so much hardship and humiliation.)
  • Câu chuyện về sự tủi cực của một thời đói nghèo. (The story of the hardship and humiliation from a time of poverty.)

Advanced Usage

• The word is often used to describe a prolonged state of enduring both emotional shame and material deprivation, typical in literary or reflective contexts about difficult pasts.
• It can modify abstract nouns like "kiếp" (destiny) or "cuộc đời" (life) to describe a fate filled with suffering and disgrace.

Variants and Related Words

• Tủi thân (adj): To feel sorry for oneself, to feel hurt and self-pity.

  • Cô ấy tủi thân khi bị bỏ rơi. (She felt sorry for herself when she was abandoned.)

• Cực khổ (adj): Hard, arduous, full of toil and difficulty (focuses more on physical hardship than shame).

  • Công việc cực khổ ở đồng ruộng. (The arduous work in the fields.)

Synonyms

• Hardship and humiliation: The combined experience of shame and suffering.
• Misery with disgrace: A state of great unhappiness accompanied by loss of dignity.
• Abject poverty: A state of extreme poverty that degrades.

Related Idioms and Phrases

• Tủi phận: To feel one's lot in life is pitiable and lowly.

  • Bà tủi phận vì con cái không hiếu thảo. (The old woman felt her lot was pitiable because her children were not filial.)

• Nếm trải tủi cực: To taste/experience hardship and humiliation.

  • Ông ấy đã nếm trải đủ mọi tủi cực thời trẻ. (He tasted all kinds of hardship and humiliation in his youth.)