How to say it in Chinese

Ordeal in Chinese

ordeal · HSK 7–9

煎熬 jiān áo

Press again to hear it slower.

  1. 煎 jiān to pan-fry
  2. 熬 áo to boil

等待结果的那几天真是一种煎熬。 Those days of waiting for the results were a real ordeal.

It joins your Backpack for Review.

Other ways to say ordeal

More words with 煎 or 熬

See any word in its sentence

The extension shows a card like this for 煎熬 and every other word on any page or YouTube subtitle, with the meaning that sentence uses.

How do you say ordeal in Chinese?

Ordeal in Chinese is 煎熬 (jiān áo). You can also say 磨难 (mó nàn), 考验 (kǎo yàn), 洗礼 (xǐ lǐ).

Which word should I use?

Start with the first one: it is the easiest on the HSK list. The others say it too, often in a more formal way or for a narrower sense; each one’s page has real sentences that show how it is used.

Where do these words come from?

Our own dictionary’s meanings for the official HSK word list. A word is shown for an English word when that is one of its first meanings; the easiest word whose first meaning it is comes first.

More free tools

Greetings: hello, good morning and goodbye. Measure words: the classifier for any noun. Tone practice: say a word and see your tones. Read any Mandarin: point at a word for its meaning.

Meanings from our own dictionary. Chinese often has more than one way to say a word.