留
liú HSK2

to stay

留 liú
stay verb
to remain in a place or position and not depart

他决定留在家里看书。

tā jué​dìng liú zài jiā​lǐ kàn shū.

He decided to stay home and read.

keep verb
to retain, save, or preserve something for future use

这件衣服我想留着以后穿。

zhè jiàn yī​fu wǒ xiǎng liú zhe yǐ​hòu chuān.

I want to keep this piece of clothing to wear later.

leave behind verb
to leave a message, mark, or instruction for others

他在桌子上留了一张便条。

tā zài zhuō​zi shàng liú le yī zhāng biàn​tiáo.

He left a note on the table.

Cross-References

Has old variant

Frequency
Character
Written text
554th most common 378.7 per million
Movie subtitles
333rd most common 466.7 per million appears in 88% of films
Word
Movie subtitles
276.4 per million appears in 67% of films
Written text
123.6 per million

Details
HSK 2.0
Level 3
HSK 3.0
Level 2
Strokes
10
Unicode
U+7559

Sources
Definitions
CC-CEDICT
Frequency data
MTSU Chinese text computingSUBTLEX-CHBCC Corpus (BLCU)