Apologize in Chinese
to apologize · HSK 4
抱歉
- 抱 to hold in one's arms
- 歉 apology
抱歉，我来晚了。 Sorry, I'm late.
Other ways to say apologize
More words with 抱 or 歉
How do you say apologize in Chinese?
Apologize in Chinese is 抱歉 (bào qiàn). You can also say 道歉 (dào qiàn), 认错 (rèn cuò).
Which word should I use?
Start with the first one: it is the easiest on the HSK list. The others say it too, often in a more formal way or for a narrower sense; each one’s page has real sentences that show how it is used.
Where do these words come from?
The CC-CEDICT dictionary’s meanings for the official HSK word list. A word is shown for an English word when that is one of its first meanings; the easiest word whose first meaning it is comes first.
More free tools
Greetings: hello, good morning and goodbye. Measure words: the classifier for any noun. Tone practice: say a word and see your tones. Read any Mandarin: point at a word for its meaning.
Meanings from CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0). Chinese often has more than one way to say a word.