要
yàoyāo HSK1

want

要 yào frequency
will verb
will; shall; to be about to do something

我要去超市买东西。

wǒ yào qù chāo​shì mǎi dōng​xi.

I'm going to the supermarket to buy some things.

should verb
need to; should; must

我们要做完作业才能出去玩。

wǒ​men yào zuò​wán zuò​yè cái néng chū​qù wán.

We must finish our homework before we can go out to play.

want verb
to want, need, or ask for something

我要一杯咖啡。

wǒ yào yī bēi kā​fēi.

I'd like a cup of coffee.

if verb
if; in case (often appearing as the word 要是 yào​shi)

你要早点说，我就不去了。

nǐ yào zǎo diǎn shuō, wǒ jiù bù qù le.

If you had told me earlier, I wouldn't have gone.

important verb
important; essential; vital

这是目前最重要的事情。

zhè shì mù​qián zuì zhòng yào de shì​qing.

This is the most important thing right now.

要 yāo
demand particle
(bound form) to demand or coerce

老师对我们的作业质量提出了很高的要求。

lǎo​shī duì wǒ​men de zuò​yè zhì​liàng tí​chū le hěn gāo de yāo qiú.

The teacher has set high standards for the quality of our homework.

Frequency
Character
Written text
26th most common 4191.2 per million
Movie subtitles
19th most common 7594.4 per million appears in 100% of films
Word
Movie subtitles
7114.2 per million appears in 100% of films
Written text
2695.6 per million

Details
HSK 2.0
Level 2
HSK 3.0
Level 1
Strokes
9
Unicode
U+8981

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