Good medicine is bitter.
CHINESE DICTIONARY ENTRY
良药苦口
good medicine tastes bitter (idiom); fig. frank criticism is hard to swallow
IN A VIDEO良药苦口
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DEFINITIONS & USAGE
Meaning and common use
01
good medicine tastes bitter (idiom); fig. frank criticism is hard to swallow
REAL CORPUS EXAMPLES
How 良药苦口 actually appears in real sentences.
These sentences are copied from the Tatoeba corpus, so they are real usage rather than generated text. 良药苦口 appears in 3 of the 89,190 sentences we searched. Sentences without a published English translation are shown in Chinese only.
No published English translation for this sentence.
ABOUT THIS ENTRY
Where this entry comes from
The HSK level, part of speech, and pronunciation come from the HSK 3.1 vocabulary syllabus. The English definitions come from CC-CEDICT. Corpus sentences, collocations, and the frequency figure come from the Tatoeba Chinese sentence export and are counted rather than written, so nothing on this page is invented. Usage notes and the hand-written examples that appear higher up exist only for a handful of entries.
Definitions from CC-CEDICT, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Vocabulary levels and parts of speech from the HSK 3.1 syllabus. This compiled dictionary is shared under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
COMMON QUESTIONS
About 良药苦口
What does 良药苦口 mean in Chinese?
良药苦口 (liángyàokǔkǒu) means good medicine tastes bitter (idiom); fig. frank criticism is hard to swallow.
How do you pronounce 良药苦口?
良药苦口 is pronounced liángyàokǔkǒu.
Is 良药苦口 an HSK word?
良药苦口 is on the list of the HSK 3.1 vocabulary syllabus.
SEE IT IN CONTEXT
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