痛 (tòng) · pain; ache; painful

Meanings

1 pain; ache; painful
2 deeply; thoroughly
3 to ache; to hurt

Characters

痛

tòng

pain; to ache

Contains the illness radical 疒, indicating a physical sensation related to sickness or discomfort.

Examples

HSK 4

肚子好痛啊！

Dùzi hǎo tòng a!

My stomach really hurts!

HSK 4

失去他让我很痛苦。

Shīqù tā ràng wǒ hěn tòngkǔ.

Losing him caused me great pain.

HSK 4

他痛哭了一场。

Tā tòngkū le yī chǎng.

He had a good cry.

Tips

usage

痛 describes both physical pain (头痛, headache; 牙痛, toothache) and emotional pain (心痛, heartache; 痛苦, suffering). As an adverb it means 'deeply': 痛哭 (cry bitterly), 痛恨 (hate deeply).

Components

radical

疒 nè

sickness radical

Outer indexing sickness radical 疒 - depicts a person leaning against a sickbed (bed propped sideways). Anchors 痛 in the illness-and-injury family alongside 病 (ill), 疼 (sore), 疾 (disease), 疯 (mad). When 疒 wraps a character, the meaning is something wrong with the body.

phonetic

甬 yǒng

path; bell-tube (here phonetic)

Inside 甬 supplies the sound (yǒng → tòng through y/t alternation in Old Chinese). Same phonetic family: 通 (through), 桶 (bucket), 涌 (gush), 勇 (brave). 甬 originally depicted a hollow bronze bell or a covered passageway, lending a faint sense of pain "passing through" the body.