Skip to content

意思

yì si 4–5

idea; opinion; meaning; wish; desire; interest; fun; token of appreciation, affection etc; to give as a small token; to do sth as a gesture of goodwill etc

HSK level
HSK 2
HSK 2.0 level 2 · HSK 3.0 level 2
Characters
2
意 · 思
Syllables
2
yì si
Frequency
Common
corpus count 988

Part of speech: n,v

Character by character

  • 意yì13 strokesHSK 2thought, idea, opinion; think
  • 思sī9 strokesHSK 2think, consider, ponder; final particle

Each character links to its stroke order page with a tracing and a writing exercise.

Example sentences

  • 不好意思！

    B h oy si

    Excuse me!

  • 这是什么意思？

    Zhè shì shén me yì si

    What does this stand for?

  • 你是什么意思？

    Nǐ shì shén me yì si

    What are you trying to imply?

  • 正是这个意思！

    Zhèng shì zhè ge yì si

    That's exactly what it means!

Example sentences from Tatoeba (CC BY 2.0 FR), contributed by their community.

Words with the same characters

These words share at least one character with 意思. Reading them together is how the character starts to stick — the same characters in a different context.

Keep going