本来

Pinyin
běnlái
English
originally
HSK level
HSK 4

本来 is pronounced běnlái and means “originally”. It is one of the words in the HSK 4 vocabulary, a level of the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi, China’s standardised Chinese proficiency test. Recognising a word on a page and recalling it when you need it are different skills, and only the second survives a conversation — which is why LexiTrail shows you 本来 again just before you would have forgotten it, rather than on a fixed schedule.

Practise HSK 4 with 本来 →