Kilo Lingo

(kě pà) - frightening, terrible, scary in Mandarin

Traditional: 可怕

Line drawing of 可怕
Coloured illustration of 可怕
HSK 4
#704 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

frightening, terrible, scary

Word origin

可怕 means frightening or terrible, literally 'able to fear'. 可 (kě) means worthy of. 怕 (pà) means to fear, a phono-semantic compound with the 忄 'heart' radical and phonetic 白 (bái).

Origin
compound
Root
可 (kě, worthy of) + 怕 (pà, to fear)

Stroke order

Stroke order for 可

Stroke order for 怕

Examples

This film is very scary.

He had a frightening dream.

The situation is more terrible than imagined.

I had a terrible dream last night.

Last night's rain was dreadful.

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This word is part of lesson 15.