焦头烂额 Save Sign in to save words Traditional (Taiwan): 焦頭爛額 jiāotóulàné ㄐㄧㄠ ㄊㄡˊ ㄌㄢˋ ㄜˊ lit. badly burned about the head (from trying to put out a fire) (idiom) fig. hard-pressed under pressure (from a heavy workload, creditors etc) Character by character 焦(jiāo)surname Jiao 头(tóu)head 烂(làn)soft 额(é)forehead A Chinese word or character, or English Search Sources CC-CEDICT, CC BY-SA 4.0 pinyinjs, Apache-2.0