嚴刑拷打

1. • torture
2. • interrogation by torture

Character by character

• 嚴(yán)surname Yan
• 刑(xíng)surname Xing
• 拷(kǎo)beat
• 打(dǎ)a semantically light, transitive verb that is combined with various grammatical objects to form compound verbs and verb-object phrases with a diverse range of meanings