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厉害

lì hai 4–5

(used to describe sb or sth that makes a very strong impression, whether favorable or unfavorable) terrible; intense; severe; devastating; amazing; awesome; outstanding; (of a person) stern; strict; harsh; shrewd; tough; (of an animal) fierce; (of a resemblance) striking; (of liquor or chili pepper) strong; (of bacteria) virulent

HSK level
HSK 5
HSK 2.0 level 4 · HSK 3.0 level 5
Characters
2
厉 · 害
Syllables
2
lì hai
Frequency
Common
corpus count 1,925

Part of speech: a,an

Character by character

  • 厉lì5 strokesHSK 4 traditional 厲whetstone; grind, sharpen; whet
  • 害hài10 strokesHSK 3injure, harm; destroy, kill

Each character links to its stroke order page with a tracing and a writing exercise.

Example sentences

  • 我非常厉害。

    Wǒ fēi cháng lì hai

    I'm a bad-ass.

  • 我烧得很厉害。

    Wǒ shāo de hěn lì hai

    I have a high fever.

  • 痛过，但是没现在这么厉害。

    Tòng guo dàn shì méi xiàn zài zhè me lì hai

    It's ached before, but never as badly as right now.

Example sentences from Tatoeba (CC BY 2.0 FR), contributed by their community.

Words with the same characters

These words share at least one character with 厉害. Reading them together is how the character starts to stick — the same characters in a different context.

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