要

to want; must; will

No. 24 most used · 0.79% of everyday spoken Chinese: about 1 character in every 126.

Also read: yāo 要求

How it's built

• 覀cover
• 女woman

A way to remember it

A woman (女) with her hands on her waist: she wants something.

Words

• 不要

  bú yào

  don't!; must not
• 需要

  xū yào

  to need; to want; to demand; to require; needs
• 想要

  xiǎng yào

  to want to; to feel like; to fancy
• 重要

  zhòng yào

  important; significant; major
• 只要

  zhǐ yào

  so long as; provided; if
• 要是

  yào shi

  (coll.) if

Sentences

• 不要小看我的力量。

  bú yào xiǎo kàn wǒ de lì liang

  Don't underestimate my power.
• 不要相信他说的话。

  bú yào xiāng xìn tā shuō de huà

  Don't believe what he says.
• 不要说话，好不好？

  bú yào shuō huà hǎo bu hǎo

  Quit talking, will you?
• 他有很多工作要做。

  tā yǒu hěn duō gōng zuò yào zuò

  He had a lot of work to do.

Your progress is saved in this browser. In the app it comes with you, along with your own songs and videos. Get the app

How often characters are written: wordfreq by Robyn Speer, CC BY-SA 4.0, with data from Google Books Ngrams and SUBTLEX by Marc Brysbaert and others. Meanings: CC-CEDICT, CC BY-SA 4.0. Sentences: Tatoeba, CC BY 2.0 FR. How often they're said: FrequencyWords and OPUS, from OpenSubtitles.