老
lǎo HSK1

old

老 lǎo
old adjective
old (of people); venerable

他年纪很大，已经很老了。

tā nián​jì hěn dà, yǐ​jīng hěn lǎo le.

He is very old.

prefix adjective
prefix used before a surname, a numeral indicating birth order, or to show familiarity

老王是我的好朋友。

lǎo Wáng shì wǒ de hǎo péng​you.

Lao Wang is a good friend of mine.

experienced adjective
experienced; of long standing

他是厂里的老工人。

tā shì chǎng lǐ de lǎo gōng​rén.

He is a veteran worker at the factory.

old (of things) adjective
referring to things that have existed for a long time; vintage or classic
always adverb
always; all the time

他老是想家。

tā lǎo shì xiǎng jiā.

He is always homesick.

tough adjective
tough (of meat, etc.); overcooked

牛肉煮得太老了。

niú​ròu zhǔ de tài lǎo le.

The beef is overcooked and tough.

very adverb
very; extremely (as an adverb of degree)

他老远就看见了我。

tā lǎo yuǎn jiù kàn​jiàn le wǒ.

He saw me from a great distance.

Frequency
Character
Written text
179th most common 1152.7 per million
Movie subtitles
161st most common 1124.8 per million appears in 95% of films
Word
Movie subtitles
490.4 per million appears in 73% of films
Written text
356.8 per million

Details
HSK 2.0
Level 1
HSK 3.0
Level 1
Strokes
6
Unicode
U+8001

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