Nothing changes until you open the link we send to the new
address.
Appearance
Mode
Accent colour
Tone colours in Pinyin
Delete account
Erases your account, library, folders, notes, pictures and
history for good. It cannot be undone.
Powered by frontier AI
Scan Chinese.Read it, hear it, learn it.
The most advanced AI-powered Chinese scanner,
translator and dictionary.
Point your camera at a sign, draw a character you have seen,
or paste Chinese characters.
Drop an image with Chinese textor tap to browse your files
or
Drag on the picture to read just one part of it.
Tap a character to add it
Draw a character to see suggestions
Suggestions appear as you draw; tap one to add it to the text box.
Recognize+ asks the cloud recognizer when they are wrong.
Text to translateChinese or English
Try it without an account — scan, draw, type or ask the Chinese AI. An account adds dictation, character pages written for you, and keeps every card you make.
Flashcards come back just before you would forget them.
Ask our advanced Chinese AI
Characters, tones, grammar, the difference between two words
that look the same. Ask the way you would ask a teacher — it
runs on frontier AI, knows Chinese in depth and answers about
nothing else.
Get Pinyin, Cantonese Yale, English and audio back, and a
reference page for anything you want to understand properly.
With an account, everything you look up is saved to your own
library, ready to review and practise later.
FrequencyAmong the 20 most common characters in written Chinese
以 means 'to use, by means of, with' and, by extension, 'according to' and 'in order to'. In modern Chinese it is mostly a grammatical word: you meet it everywhere in 可以 (can), 所以 (so, therefore), 以为 (to assume wrongly), and in direction/time words like 以前, 以后, 以上, 以外. It is one of the most frequent characters in the language and worth learning early.
Mandarinyǐ · ㄧˇ
Cantoneseji5 · yíh
Only one reading in modern use. In Cantonese it is a low-rising tone (ji5), the same syllable as 耳 and 已.
prepositionwith, by means of, using (以手 'with the hand', 以英语交谈 'converse in English')
prepositionaccording to, on the basis of; in the capacity of (以成绩排名 'rank by results')
conjunctionin order to, so as to (often in written style: 以便, 以免)
particleused after direction and time words to mark a boundary: 以上 (above), 以下 (below), 以前 (before), 以后 (after), 以内 (within)
verb (literary)to use; to take (as). Rare on its own today, surviving in set phrases such as 学以致用
How it is built
pictograph
Radical 人. person.
㠯both the original form of the character, written on the left as the hooked element; it carried both the shape and the sound
人meaning 'person', added later on the right, suggesting a person using or carrying something
Origin
The oracle-bone and bronze forms show a single element, 㠯, which later had 人 ('person') added beside it to give today's 以. What 㠯 originally depicted is genuinely disputed: common proposals are a plough or digging tool (linking it to 耜 sì), a carried basket or load, and — in an older and now less favoured reading — a fetus. Whatever the picture, the character was used very early for the abstract sense 'to use, by means of', and that sense has dominated ever since. Modern dictionaries place it under the 人 radical, counting 4 strokes (Kangxi counts 5, as 人 plus 3).
Remembering it
Think of the right-hand 人 as a person and the left-hand hook as the tool or load that person is holding: a person *using* something — 以 = 'by means of'. From there 可以 is 'able to use it' = 'can'.
以 by itself is written-style; in speech you normally use 用 ('use') instead — say 用筷子吃, not 以筷子吃. But the compounds 可以, 所以, 以为, 以前, 以后 are fully colloquial and extremely common, in Cantonese too (可以 ho2 ji5, 所以 so2 ji5). Note that 以为 almost always implies the belief turned out to be wrong; for a neutral 'I think', use 觉得/認為. Also distinguish 以前 (before, in the past) from 已经 yǐjīng (already) — same sound, different character.
Context
以 appears in many well-known set phrases: 以身作则 (set an example by one's own conduct), 以德报怨 (repay resentment with kindness), 学以致用 (study in order to apply), and 物以类聚 (like attracts like). 以 also starts the classical phrase 以人为本 ('people-oriented'), common in modern official language.
A reference page for every character and common word we have
been asked about: readings, meaning, the words it appears in
and where it came from. Free to read, no account needed.
