tủi cực
Definition
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.
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.)