苦しい
Meanings
I-adjective
1. painful; difficult; tough; hard
2. distressing; (psychologically) difficult; stressful; awkward (e.g. position)
3. straitened (circumstances); tight (financial situation); needy; struggling
4. strained (interpretation, explanation, etc.); lame (e.g. excuse); forced (e.g. smile); far-fetched
Suffix
I-adjective
5. hard to do; unpleasant (after -masu stem of verb; often ぐるしい)
Kanji used
Pitch accent
くるしい
Used in vocabulary
Examples22
彼の
His family is rather badly off.
苦しい、
It's so painful. Stop it!
彼
He meditated on his past life of suffering.
その
They were badly off in the village.
息
She could scarcely gasp the words.
わずかな
It's hard for me to live on my small income.