先
xiānxiàn HSK1

first

先 xiān frequency
first adverb
earlier in time or sequence; beforehand; in advance

我不知道该先看哪里。

wǒ bù​zhī​dào gāi xiān kàn nǎ​li.

I don't know where to look first.

我绝对会先救你的。

wǒ jué​duì huì xiān jiù nǐ de.

I would save you first, for sure.

deceased noun
(bound form) deceased; late; ancestors; previous generations
to lead (xiān) verb
to walk ahead of others; to lead; to precede
for now adverb
for the time being; for the moment; temporarily (often used with a negative to mean "not yet")

我们先别离婚。

wǒ​men xiān bié lí hūn.

Let's not get divorced yet.

surname
a Chinese surname
先 xiàn
to lead (xiàn)
(literary) to lead; to guide; to precede a senior or superior

Cross-References

Antonym

Frequency
Character
Written text
188th most common 1088.5 per million
Movie subtitles
115th most common 1521.2 per million appears in 98% of films
Word
Movie subtitles
478.7 per million appears in 83% of films
Written text
293.6 per million

Details
HSK 2.0
Level 1
HSK 3.0
Level 1
Strokes
6
Unicode
U+5148

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