HSK 3 vocabularyHSK 3.0

先

xiān

beforehand; first; earlier

HSK 3
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Meaning of 先 in English

xiānHSK 3adverbSyllabus #890
  1. beforehand; first; earlier
  2. at first; originally
  3. for the time being; for now
  4. (prefix) my late (in referring to deceased relatives older than oneself)

Example sentences

  1. 你在说话前应该先思考。
    nǐ zài shuō huà qián yīng gāi xiān sī kǎo。
    You should think before you speak.
    Tatoeba #530712 by biglion · #241002 by CK · CC BY 2.0 FR
  2. 来抽签决定谁先走吧。
    lái chōu qiān jué dìng shuí xiān zǒu ba。
    Let's draw lots to decide who goes first.
    Tatoeba #1397392 by mtdot · #63035 by CM · CC BY 2.0 FR
  3. 他们比我们先开始。
    tā men bǐ wǒ men xiān kāi shǐ。
    They had started earlier than we had.
    Tatoeba #5550326 by verdastelo9604 · #306661 by CK · CC BY 2.0 FR

Sentence pinyin is generated automatically and may contain errors.

Characters

Tap the character to see its stroke order

HSK words with 先

先生HSK 1首先HSK 4领先HSK 5事先HSK 5先后HSK 5先进HSK 5率先HSK 6先前HSK 6优先HSK 6原先HSK 6

Level, pinyin and part of speech: HSK Syllabus (CLEC, Nov 2025). Definitions: CC-CEDICT, CC BY-SA 4.0. Sources & licences