Chinese word dictionary

开玩笑

kāiwánxiào · to play a joke; to make fun of; to joke

Practice word

Word information

Simplified开玩笑

Traditional開玩笑

Pinyinkāiwánxiào

Part of speechv

HSK 3.04

HSK 2.04

Character breakdown

Study each Hanzi separately, then return to the complete word so pronunciation, meaning, and movement stay connected.

开kāi

to open; to start, to initiate, to begin

玩wán

to play with, to joke, to entertain

笑xiào

to smile, to laugh; to giggle; to snicker

How to learn 开玩笑

Listen once without reading, repeat the pinyin with its tones, then write every character in sequence. Finally, recall the complete meaning instead of memorizing each character as an isolated translation.

When the word appears in a sentence, check whether its part of speech and meaning match the definition shown here. Chinese words can change nuance with context.

Related vocabulary

Words with the same characters

Compare how a familiar Hanzi changes meaning inside another word.

好玩儿hǎowánr

erhua variant of 好玩[hao3 wan2]

开kāi

to open (transitive or intransitive); (of ships, vehicles, troops etc) to start; to turn on; to put in operation; to operate; to run; to boil; to write out (a prescription, check, invoice etc); (directional complement) away; off; carat (gold); abbr. for Kelvin, 開爾文|开尔文[Kai1 er3 wen2]; abbr. for 開本|开本[kai1 ben3], book format

开车kāichē

to drive a car (or train etc); (slang) to post sexual content online; to make a sexual joke

玩wán

to play; to have fun; to trifle with; toy; sth used for amusement; curio or antique (Taiwan pr. [wan4]); to keep sth for entertainment; variant of 玩[wan2]; Taiwan pr. [wan4]

打开dǎkāi

to open; to show (a ticket); to turn on; to switch on

开始kāishǐ

to begin; beginning; to start; initial; CL:個|个[ge4]