How to say it in Chinese

Tense in Chinese

tense · HSK 4

紧张 jǐn zhāng

  1. 紧 jǐn tight
  2. 张 zhāng to open

考试前我总是很紧张。 I'm always nervous before exams.

Hear 紧张 and see more sentences

Other ways to say tense

More words with 紧 or 张

How do you say tense in Chinese?

Tense in Chinese is 紧张 (jǐn zhāng). You can also say 紧 (jǐn).

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.