下午

下午 xiàwǔ

Afternoon

HSK 1 xiawu

What 下午 means

  1. Afternoon

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 下午 will read it the same way this page does.

Character by character

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

xià
Below (under - down - fall - next - lower - finish)
Noon (11 a.m.-1 p.m. - 7th earthly branch)

How to write 下午

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

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

下午 in a sentence

我下午去学校。
Wǒ xiàwǔ qù xuéxiào.
I am going to school in the afternoon.

Want pinyin above a sentence of your own? Paste it into the Pinyin Annotator.

Questions about 下午

What does 下午 mean in English?

下午 is pronounced xiàwǔ and means Afternoon.

How do you pronounce 下午?

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

What are the characters in 下午?

下午 is written with 2 characters: 下 (xià) Below (under - down - fall - next - lower - finish), 午 (wǔ) Noon (11 a.m.-1 p.m. - 7th earthly branch). Knowing the parts is usually how the whole word becomes memorable.

Is 下午 an HSK word?

Yes — 下午 is on the official HSK 1 vocabulary list. You can study it with the rest of that list on the HSK 1 page.

Studied around the same time

Keep going

Translate a whole sentence containing 下午 with the Chinese to Pinyin translator, study it alongside the rest of HSK 1, drill it with HSK flashcards, or save it above and review it on your review deck.

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