不料

不料 bùliào

Unexpectedly

不料 in a sentence HSK 6 buliao

What 不料 means

  1. Unexpectedly

These meanings come from the same dictionary that powers the Chinese to Pinyin translator and the Chinese to English translator, so a whole sentence containing 不料 will read it the same way this page does.

Recognise a piece of 不料 but not the character it belongs to? Pick the parts in the component character finder and it will name the character for you — free for every character, with nothing to sign in to.

Character by character

不料 is written with 2 characters. Chinese words are usually easier to remember once you can see what each part contributes.

不
bù
No (not)
料
liào
Expect (material - feed)

How to write 不料

Stroke order is not decoration — it is what makes handwriting legible and what dictionary lookup by stroke count depends on.

Practise 不料 on printable 田字格 sheets, trace it in the writing practice tool, or watch any other character in the Stroke Order Animator.

不料 in a sentence

我以为他会生气,不料他笑了。
Wǒ yǐwéi tā huì shēngqì, búliào tā xiào le.
I thought he would be angry, but to my surprise he laughed.
本想第二天出发,不料下起了大雪。
Běn xiǎng dì èr tiān chūfā, búliào xià qǐ le dàxuě.
We meant to set off the next day, but unexpectedly heavy snow began to fall.

Every sentence on this site that uses 不料 is collected on the 不料 sentence page. Want pinyin above a sentence of your own? Paste it into the Pinyin Annotator.

Questions about 不料

What does 不料 mean in English?

不料 is pronounced bùliào and means Unexpectedly.

How do you pronounce 不料?

不料 is bùliào in pinyin — written buliao without tone marks. Press the audio button on this page to hear it spoken by a native voice.

What are the characters in 不料?

不料 is written with 2 characters: 不 (bù) No (not), 料 (liào) Expect (material - feed). Knowing the parts is usually how the whole word becomes memorable.

Is 不料 an HSK word?

Yes — 不料 is on the official HSK 6 vocabulary list. You can study it with the rest of that list on the HSK 6 page.

Studied around the same time

Keep going

Translate a whole sentence containing 不料 with the Chinese to Pinyin translator, study it alongside the rest of HSK 6, drill it with HSK flashcards, or save it above and review it on your review deck.

Browse the dictionary

Every word on this site links to its entry — tap any word in a graded reader, a translation result or an HSK list to land on a page like this one.

Dictionary index