HSK 1 · Adjectives

大 dà “big” in Chinese

Same in Traditional

What 大 means

  1. big
  2. large
  3. great
  4. older (than another person)
  5. eldest (as in 大姐)
More meanings from CC-CEDICT
  • greatly
  • freely
  • fully
  • (dialect) father
  • (dialect) uncle (father’s brother)

How to say 大

  • Pitch chart of the fourth tone: falls from high to low, 5 to 1 on the five-level scale大dà4th tone, falling

大 in a sentence

  1. 多大: how old

    告诉我你多大了。

    Gàosu wǒ nǐ duō dà le.

    Tell me how old you are.

    Sentence #11708347 from Tatoeba

  2. 那飞机真大！

    Nà fēijī zhēn dà!

    That aeroplane is huge!

    Sentence #1399602 from Tatoeba

  3. 我的比你的大。

    Wǒ de bǐ nǐ de dà.

    Mine’s bigger than yours.

    Sentence #10272071 from Tatoeba

How 大 is built

Each colour is one part of the character. Parts repeat across thousands of characters, so learning them makes new words easier. See all 214 in our radicals chart.

The character 大 (dà) with each of its parts in a different colour
大dàbig; large; great
  • 一one · yī
  • 人person · rén

Memory aidA person standing with arms stretched wide: big.

How to write 大

大 3 strokes

Watch the order, then press Try writing it and draw each stroke in the grid. Each stroke is checked as you go.

大 (dà) stroke order chart: each stroke of the character in the order you write it
Stroke order chart for 大 (dà). Red marks the next stroke, so you can copy it onto paper one step at a time.

Words related to 大

Words with 大

大学dàxué · university大学生dàxuéshēng · university student大家dàjiā · everyone大人dàren · adult大衣dàyī · overcoat大小dàxiǎo · size大熊猫dàxióngmāo · giant panda大夫dàifu · doctor大概dàgài · roughly大约dàyuē · approximately

More words: Adjectives

好hǎo · good小xiǎo · small多duō · many少shǎo · few冷lěng · cold自主zìzhǔ · independent纵横zònghéng · in all directions棕色zōngsè · brown

FAQs

大 (dà) means “big” or “large”. It is an HSK 1 word, so it is one of the words learners meet early.
Say it dà: dà with a 4th tone. Press Listen at the top of this page to hear it, or Slowly to hear each tone clearly.
Yes. 大 is written the same way in Simplified and Traditional characters.
Add a Chinese (Simplified) pinyin keyboard to your phone or computer, type da with no tone marks or spaces, then choose 大 from the suggestions. Typing da into this dictionary’s search box finds it too.
大 is an HSK 1 word in the HSK 2.0 word lists.

Turn words into conversations

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Sources: meaning and pinyin checked by a native Mandarin teacher against the official HSK lists. Extra meanings from CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0). Example sentences from Tatoeba (CC BY 2.0 FR). Character parts and stroke order from Make Me a Hanzi.