How to say it in Chinese

Surprising in Chinese

surprising · HSK 7–9

出人意料 chū rén yì liào

Press again to hear it slower.

  1. 出 chū to go out
  2. 人 rén person
  3. 意 yì idea
  4. 料 liào material

比赛的结果出人意料。 The result of the match was unexpected.

It joins your Backpack for Review.

More words with 出 or 人 or 意 or 料

See any word in its sentence

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

How do you say surprising in Chinese?

Surprising in Chinese is 出人意料 (chū rén yì liào).

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.