不到
bù​dào

less than

不到 bù​dào
less than adverbnumeral
Less than a certain amount, age, or level; under

我女儿十六岁还不到。

wǒ nǚ'ér shí​liù suì hái bù​dào.

My daughter isn't even 16 yet.

当事情需要不到两分钟的时间完成时，立即执行。

dāng shì​qing xū​yào bù​dào liǎng fēn​zhōng de shí​jiān wán chéng shí, lì​jí zhí​xíng.

When something takes less than two minutes to complete, do it immediately.

[potential] particle
Used after a verb to indicate that the action cannot be completed or the result cannot be reached; used in resultative verb compounds such as 看不到 kàn​bu​dào or 买不到 mǎi​bu​dào.

我做到了你所做不到的。

wǒ zuò dào le nǐ suǒ zuò bù dào de.

I did what you couldn't.

他们经常能看到你看不到的东西。

tā​men jīng​cháng néng kàn dào nǐ kàn bù dào de dōng​xi.

They can often see things you can’t.

not reach verb
To not arrive at or reach a location; to not go as far as

迟到总比不到好，不是吗？

chí​dào zǒng bǐ bù​dào hǎo, bù​shì​ma?

Better late than never, right?

unexpectedly
(literary) unexpectedly; not likely; to not anticipate
unlikely to
To not be to the point of; unlikely to happen; will not

Frequency
Movie subtitles
43.5 per million appears in 19% of films
Written text
176.5 per million

Cross-References

See

Sources
Frequency data
SUBTLEX-CHBCC Corpus (BLCU)