水
water
HSK level
- Pinyin
- shuǐ
- Part of speech
- noun
- Level
- HSK 1
- Strokes
- 4
- Register
- neutral
- Measure word
- 杯 / 瓶
- In episodes
- 3
Stroke order for 水
水 is written with 4 strokes. The animation replays automatically.
What does 水 mean?
水 (shuǐ) is the Chinese word for 'water' — the substance, drinking water, and water more broadly (rivers, lakes, rain).
Unlike English, Chinese speakers always count water with a measure word: 一杯水 ('a glass of water'), 一瓶水 ('a bottle of water'), 一口水 ('a sip of water') — never *一水. Two useful distinctions for restaurants: 开水 (kāishuǐ) is 'boiled / hot drinking water,' the default beverage in many Chinese households; 冰水 (bīngshuǐ) is 'ice water,' which you may need to specifically request. 水 is also a productive component in compounds: 水果 (fruit, lit.
'water fruit'), 喝水 (drink water), 洗手水 (water for washing hands). The character 水 is one of the basic 部首 (radicals) and appears reduced as 氵 (three drops) in many other characters: 河 river, 海 sea, 酒 alcohol.
Memory hook: 水 is a pictograph — the central line is the river, the curves on each side are splashing droplets.
Hear 水 in real episodes
水 appears in 3 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.
这条运河，要很多很多水。
This canal needs lots and lots of water.
Crossing the Panama Canal Now Costs Up to $5 Million, as War and Drought Push Prices to a Record
里面有水。
Inside there is water.
New York Put Free Toilets on the Street, and the Door Slides Open by Itself After Exactly Ten Minutes — Finished or Not
黄石公园有很多热水。
Yellowstone has many hot springs.
Yellowstone Finds Over 280 Hats in Hot-Spring Areas
Example sentences
我想喝水。
Wǒ xiǎng hē shuǐ.
I want to drink water.
spoken
请给我一杯水。
Qǐng gěi wǒ yì bēi shuǐ.
Please give me a glass of water.
spoken
这个水很热。
Zhège shuǐ hěn rè.
This water is very hot.
spoken
多喝水对身体好。
Duō hē shuǐ duì shēntǐ hǎo.
Drinking more water is good for your health.
neutral
Common phrases with 水
Don't confuse 水 with
冰 is 'ice' — frozen water. 冰水 = 'ice water' (water with ice). 水 alone is plain water, which in China is often served warm by default.
汤 is 'soup' (broth-based dishes), not water. Don't say 水 when you mean the soup served at dinner — that's 汤.
FAQ
Related words from the same episodes
Acquire it by listening
Meet 水 again — in real Chinese, at your level.
You just saw 水 in 3 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.