How to say it in Chinese

Caught off guard in Chinese

caught off guard · HSK 7–9

措手不及 cuò shǒu bù jí

Press again to hear it slower.

  1. 措 cuò to arrange
  2. 手 shǒu hand
  3. 不 bù not
  4. 及 jí and

突然下起大雨,我们措手不及。 It suddenly started pouring, and we were caught off guard.

It joins your Backpack for Review.

More words with 措 or 手 or 不 or 及

See any word in its sentence

The extension shows a card like this for 措手不及 and every other word on any page or YouTube subtitle, with the meaning that sentence uses.

How do you say caught off guard in Chinese?

Caught off guard in Chinese is 措手不及 (cuò shǒu bù jí).

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?

Our own 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 our own dictionary. Chinese often has more than one way to say a word.