好
good; fine; okay
HSK level
- Pinyin
- hǎo
- Part of speech
- adjective
- Level
- HSK 1
- Strokes
- 6
- Register
- neutral
- In episodes
- 2
Stroke order for 好
好 is written with 6 strokes. The animation replays automatically.
What does 好 mean?
好 (hǎo) is the all-purpose 'good' of Mandarin and one of the first characters every learner meets.
As an adjective it describes anything positive — quality, character, weather, taste: 好书 (good book), 好人 (good person), 好天气 (good weather). As a standalone reply it means 'okay / sure / will do' — the way English uses 'sounds good.' It also appears in greetings (你好 = 'hi'), as an intensifier before adjectives meaning 'very / so' (好大 = 'so big,' 好漂亮 = 'so pretty'), and as a resultative complement on verbs meaning 'done / completed' (写好了 = 'finished writing').
One quirk: with a second 3rd tone after it (like 你好), 好 keeps its written tone mark but is pronounced as a 'half-third' tone. 好 is the workhorse word for approval, agreement, and quality in Chinese.
Memory hook: 女 (woman) + 子 (child) = 好 — a mother with her child is the picture of 'good.'
Hear 好 in real episodes
好 appears in 2 Fluentide podcast episodes at natural native speed. Each sentence plays at the easiest difficulty it exists in — switch it to hear the same moment at your level, with full pinyin and English throughout.
这里的水果很好。
The fruit here is very good.
Could Gene-Edited Trees Save Florida's Citrus Industry From Greening?
我们每天走多少步好呢？
How many steps should we walk every day?
Must You Walk 10,000 Steps? Research Finds Benefits Around 7,000
Example sentences
你好！
Nǐ hǎo!
Hi!
neutral
这本书很好。
Zhè běn shū hěn hǎo.
This book is very good.
neutral
好的，没问题。
Hǎo de, méi wèntí.
Okay, no problem.
spoken
今天天气好。
Jīntiān tiānqì hǎo.
The weather is nice today.
spoken
Common phrases with 好
Synonyms
不错 literally 'not bad,' used like 'pretty good' — a notch below 好 in enthusiasm, often safer with strangers or when grading something modestly. Native speakers use 不错 a lot to mean 'quite good.'
棒 means 'awesome / excellent,' more colloquial and energetic than 好. 你真棒 = 'you're awesome.' 好 is neutral; 棒 carries praise.
Don't confuse 好 with
Frequently asked questions
Related words from the same episodes
Acquire it by listening
Meet 好 again — in real Chinese, at your level.
You just saw 好 in 2 episodes. Fluentide keeps feeding you news episodes at your level, so this word — and thousands like it — resurface in real sentences until they stick. Full pinyin and translation every time. Free to start.