无奈
wú​nài HSK5

helpless

无奈 (無奈) wú​nài
helpless adjective
to have no choice or alternative in a situation

我卖掉这辆车也是出于无奈。

wǒ mài​diào zhè liàng chē yě shì chū​yú wú​nài.

Selling this car was something I did out of necessity.

helplessly adverb
describing a state of feeling helpless or having no choice while performing an action

他只能无奈地苦笑。

tā zhǐ néng wú​nài de kǔ​xiào.

He could only give a helpless, bitter smile.

but unfortunately adverb
used as a conjunction to introduce a factor that prevents something from happening

我很想参加聚会，无奈工作太忙，走不开。

wǒ hěn xiǎng cān​jiā jù​huì, wú​nài gōng​zuò tài máng, zǒu​bù​kāi.

I'd love to attend the party, but unfortunately, I'm too busy with work to get away.

Frequency
Movie subtitles
1.85 per million appears in 1% of films
Written text
51.6 per million

Details
HSK 2.0
Level 5
HSK 3.0
Level 5

Sources
Definitions
CC-CEDICTAI-generated definitions
Frequency data
SUBTLEX-CHBCC Corpus (BLCU)