HSK 5 · Food

开水 kāishuǐ “boiled water” in Chinese

Traditional 開水

What 开水 means

  1. boiled water
  2. boiling water

How to say 开水

  • Pitch chart of the first tone: stays high and level, 5 to 5 on the five-level scale开kāi1st tone, high and level
  • Pitch chart of the third tone: dips low then rises, 2 to 1 to 4 on the five-level scale水shuǐ3rd tone, dipping

开水 in a sentence

  1. 阿姨,您别客气,喝杯开水就行。

    Āyí, nín bié kèqi, hē bēi kāishuǐ jiù xíng.

    Please don’t go to any trouble, Auntie. A glass of boiled water is fine.

    Sentence #374679 from Tatoeba · translation adapted

  2. 我做的最拿手的菜是烧开水。

    Wǒ zuò de zuì náshǒu de cài shì shāo kāishuǐ.

    The dish I’m best at is boiling water.

    Sentence #14062697 from Tatoeba · translation adapted

  3. 请用开水把茶壶灌满。

    Qǐng yòng kāishuǐ bǎ cháhú guànmǎn.

    Please fill the teapot with boiling water.

    Sentence #9135898 from Tatoeba · converted to simplified characters

How 开水 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 开 (kāi) with each of its parts in a different colour
开kāito open
  • 一one · yī
  • 廾two hands · gǒng

Memory aidSimplified from 開: two hands lifting the bar of a gate 門: to open.

The character 水 (shuǐ) drawn as one shape
水shuǐwater

水 is a single shape of 4 strokes. Learn it whole, then watch its stroke order below.

Memory aidDrawn from flowing water.

How to write 开水

开 4 strokes · 水 4 strokes

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

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

Words related to 开水

Words with 开

Words with 水

More words: Food & Dining

FAQs

开水 (kāishuǐ) means “boiled water” or “boiling water”. It is an HSK 5 word.
Say it kāishuǐ: kāi with a 1st tone, then shuǐ with a 3rd tone. Press Listen at the top of this page to hear it, or Slowly to hear each tone clearly.
In Traditional characters, used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, 开水 is written 開水. The pronunciation is the same.
Add a Chinese (Simplified) pinyin keyboard to your phone or computer, type kaishui with no tone marks or spaces, then choose 开水 from the suggestions. Typing kaishui into this dictionary’s search box finds it too.
开水 is an HSK 5 word in the HSK 2.0 word lists.

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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.