Pitiful in Chinese
pitiful · HSK 6
可怜
- 可 can
- 怜 to pity
这只小猫看起来好可怜。 This kitten looks so pitiful.
More words with 可 or 怜
How do you say pitiful in Chinese?
Pitiful in Chinese is 可怜 (kě lián).
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.