In his later years he was frustrated and down on his luck.
Tips
usage
The 潦 reading is the everyday one, bound in two common words: 潦草 (careless, scrawled) and 潦倒 (frustrated, down and out). The separate 潦 reading means floodwater and is literary.
Left-side water radical 氵, the three-drop form of 水. The original sense of the character is about water (rain, flooding); the liáo 'careless' sense is a borrowed phonetic use.
