大不了

大不了 dàbuliǎo

At worst; if worst comes to worst; (usu. in the negative) serious; alarming†

大不了 in a sentence HSK 6 dabuliao

What 大不了 means

  1. At worst; if worst comes to worst†
  2. (usu. in the negative) serious; alarming†

† Our own dictionary has no entry for 大不了, so these meanings are adapted from CC-CEDICT, published by MDBG and its contributors and based on CEDICT © 1997, 1998 Paul Andrew Denisowski, and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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Character by character

大不了 is written with 3 characters. Chinese words are usually easier to remember once you can see what each part contributes.

大
dà
Big (oldest)
不
bù
No (not)
了
le / liǎo / liào
(past tense indicator); finish (end)

How to write 大不了

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

大不了 in a sentence

大不了重做一次,没什么可怕的。
Dàbuliǎo chóng zuò yí cì, méi shénme kěpà de.
At worst we just do it again; there is nothing to be afraid of.
这点小事没什么大不了的。
Zhè diǎn xiǎoshì méi shénme dàbuliǎo de.
A little thing like this is no big deal.

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

Questions about 大不了

What does 大不了 mean in English?

大不了 is pronounced dàbuliǎo and means At worst; if worst comes to worst, (usu. in the negative) serious; alarming †.

How do you pronounce 大不了?

大不了 is dàbuliǎo in pinyin — written dabuliao without tone marks. Press the audio button on this page to hear it spoken by a native voice.

What are the characters in 大不了?

大不了 is written with 3 characters: 大 (dà) Big (oldest), 不 (bù) No (not), 了 (le / liǎo / liào) (past tense indicator); finish (end). Knowing the parts is usually how the whole word becomes memorable.

Is 大不了 an HSK word?

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

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