bad; broken; spoiled
HSK level
坏 is written with 7 strokes. The animation replays automatically.
坏 (huài) is an adjective covering a wider range than English 'bad.'
It means: (1) bad in moral or quality terms — 坏人 'a bad person,' 坏天气 'bad weather'; (2) broken / out of order — 电视坏了 'the TV is broken'; and (3) spoiled / gone bad (food) — 牛奶坏了 'the milk has gone bad.' Two patterns English speakers should learn: first, when 坏 means 'broken' or 'spoiled,' it usually appears with 了 (huài le) to signal the change of state — 'has become broken.' Saying just 这个电视坏 sounds incomplete; you need 这个电视坏了.
Second, 坏 can attach to verbs as a resultative complement intensifying to 'extremely' — 累坏了 'exhausted,' 吓坏了 'scared to death,' 气坏了 'furious.' That construction is one of the highest-yield uses of 坏 in conversation.
我的手机坏了。
Wǒ de shǒujī huài le.
My phone is broken.
spoken
这个牛奶坏了，别喝。
Zhège niúnǎi huài le, bié hē.
This milk has gone bad, don't drink it.
spoken
他不是坏人。
Tā bú shì huàirén.
He's not a bad person.
neutral
今天累坏了。
Jīntiān lèi huài le.
I'm exhausted today.
spoken
吃太多甜的对身体不好。
Chī tài duō tián de duì shēntǐ bù hǎo.
Eating too many sweets is bad for your health.
neutral
差 means 'poor / sub-par in quality.' For describing low quality, both can work, but 差 is about performance (成绩很差 'grades are poor'); 坏 is about being morally bad, broken, or spoiled. A bad student is 差, not 坏.
烂 means 'rotten / rotten-quality' — stronger and more colloquial than 坏. 苹果烂了 (the apple is rotten) is worse than 苹果坏了 (the apple has gone bad). 烂 also means 'terrible/awful' in slang (烂片 'a terrible movie').
Visually almost identical to 坏 — only the radical differs (土 'earth' for 坏 vs 忄 'heart' for 怀). 怀 means 'to cherish / to be pregnant' (怀孕). Different tone too (huái vs huài). Easy to mis-write.
Acquire it by listening
Fluentide turns real news into Chinese listening at your exact level, so words like 坏 show up again and again in natural sentences — with pinyin and translation every time. No flashcards. Free to start.
