哑巴吃黄连，有苦说不出

to be forced to suffer in silence (idiom) / unable to speak of one's bitter suffering / sometimes written 啞子吃黃連，有苦說不出|哑子吃黄连，有苦说不出

(onom.) sound of cawing / sound of infant learning to talk / variant of 呀[ya1]

dumb / mute / hoarse / husky / unexploded (of artillery shell etc)

mute; dumb; incapable of speech / (of a voice) hoarse; husky / (of a bullet, bomb etc) dud

mute / muted / a dumb person / to be dumb

a mute / mute; silent

Ba state during Zhou dynasty (in east of modern Sichuan) / abbr. for east Sichuan or Chongqing / surname Ba / abbr. for Palestine or Palestinian / abbr. for Pakistan

to long for / to wish / to cling to / to stick to / sth that sticks / close to / next to / spread open / informal abbr. for bus 巴士[ba1 shi4] / bar (unit of pressure) / nominalizing suffix on certain nouns, such as 尾巴[wei3 ba5], tail

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]

yellow / pornographic / to fall through

no choice but to suffer in silence (idiom) / also written 啞巴吃黃蓮|哑巴吃黄莲 / (often precedes 有苦說不出|有苦说不出[you3 ku3 shuo1 bu5 chu1])

Chinese goldthread (Coptis chinensis), rhizome used in medicine

surname Lian

to link / to join / to connect / continuously / in succession / including / (used with 也[ye3], 都[dou1] etc) even / company (military)

to have; there is / (bound form) having; with; -ful; -ed; -al (as in 有意[you3 yi4] intentional)

bitter / hardship / pain / to suffer / to bring suffering to / painstakingly

to persuade

to speak / to say / to explain / to scold / to tell off / a theory (typically the last character in a compound, as in 日心說|日心说 heliocentric theory)

variant of 說|说[shuo1]

to speak; to talk; to say / to explain; to comment / to scold; to tell off / (bound form) theory; doctrine

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

having unspeakable bitter suffering / (often used after 啞巴吃黃連|哑巴吃黄连[ya3 ba5 chi1 huang2 lian2])

unable to say

to go out / to come out / to occur / to produce / to go beyond / to rise / to put forth / to happen / (used after a verb to indicate an outward direction or a positive result) / classifier for dramas, plays, operas etc

variant of 出[chu1] (classifier for plays or chapters of classical novels)