吃力不討好

arduous and thankless task (idiom); strenuous and unrewarding

to eat / to consume / to eat at (a cafeteria etc) / to eradicate / to destroy / to absorb / to suffer / to stammer (Taiwan pr. for this sense is [ji2])

variant of 吃[chi1]

to entail strenuous effort / to toil at a task / strenuous / laborious / strain

power / force / strength / ability / strenuously

no; not so / (bound form) not; un-

to invite / to provoke / to demand or ask for / to send armed forces to suppress / to denounce or condemn / to marry (a woman) / to discuss or study

to get the desired outcome / to win favor by fawning on sb / to curry favor with / a fruitful outcome to reward one's labor

good / well / proper / good to / easy to / very / so / (suffix indicating completion or readiness) / (of two people) close / on intimate terms / (after a personal pronoun) hello

to be fond of / to have a tendency to / to be prone to

good / appropriate; proper / all right! / (before a verb) easy to / (before a verb) good to / (before an adjective for exclamatory effect) so / (verb complement indicating completion) / (of two people) close; on intimate terms / (after a personal pronoun) hello

to be fond of; to have a tendency to; to be prone to