- to hover between life and death (idiom)
- to suffer terribly
- within an inch of one's life
Characters
- 死 (死): to die; impassable; uncrossable; inflexible; rigid; extremely; damned
- 去 (去): to go; to go to (a place); (of a time etc) last; just passed; to send; to remove; to get rid of; to reduce; to be apart from in space or time; to die (euphemism); to play (a part); (when used either before or after a verb) to go in order to do sth; (after a verb of motion indicates movement away from the speaker); (used after certain verbs to indicate detachment or separation)
- 活 (活): to live; alive; living; work; workmanship
- 来 (來): to come; (used as a substitute for a more specific verb); hither (directional complement for motion toward the speaker, as in 回來|回来[hui2 lai5]); ever since (as in 自古以來|自古以来[zi4 gu3 yi3 lai2]); for the past (amount of time); (prefix) the coming ...; the next ... (as in 來世|来世[lai2 shi4]); (between two verbs) in order to; (after a round number) approximately; (used after 得[de2] to indicate possibility, as in 談得來|谈得来[tan2 de5 lai2], or after 不[bu4] to indicate impossibility, as in 吃不來|吃不来[chi1 bu5 lai2])
Resources
- Wiktionary: 死去活来
- MDBG: 死去活来
- Examples with 死去活来 on Tatoeba
Examples
听闻事故,她便哭得死去活来。