起来

起来 qǐlai

Gets up (beginning or continuing an action)

起来 in a sentence HSK 3 繁體 起來 qilai

What 起来 means

  1. Gets up (beginning or continuing an action)

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 起来 will read it the same way this page does.

Recognise a piece of 起来 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

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

起
qǐ
Rise (get up - remove - form - become - sketch out - establish)
来
lái
Come (arrive)

How to write 起来

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

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

起来 in a sentence

他站起来回答问题。
Tā zhàn qǐlai huídá wèntí.
He stood up to answer the question.
天气热起来了。
Tiānqì rè qǐlai le.
The weather is getting hot.

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

Questions about 起来

What does 起来 mean in English?

起来 is pronounced qǐlai and means Gets up (beginning or continuing an action).

How do you pronounce 起来?

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

What are the characters in 起来?

起来 is written with 2 characters: 起 (qǐ) Rise (get up - remove - form - become - sketch out - establish), 来 (lái) Come (arrive). Knowing the parts is usually how the whole word becomes memorable.

How is 起来 written in traditional Chinese?

起來. The simplified form 起来 is used in mainland China and Singapore; 起來 is used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Both are pronounced qǐlai.

Is 起来 an HSK word?

Yes — 起来 is on the official HSK 3 vocabulary list. You can study it with the rest of that list on the HSK 3 page.

Studied around the same time

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