HSKWin

HSK 4 vocabulary — 1,000 words to learn

The 1,000 words the HSK 3.0 syllabus adds at HSK 4, each with the syllabus’s own pinyin and part of speech, an English meaning and audio. Free to read, and no account needed — tap any word to hear it.

1,000
words HSK 4 adds
2,000
by the end of HSK 4
1,200
under the retired HSK 2.0
322
very common in everyday Chinese
HSK 4 flashcardsPDF

The full HSK 4 vocabulary list — all 1,000 words

Sorted by pinyin, twenty words to a page. Every word is in this page already — turning a page only changes what is on screen. Pick a letter on the left to see just that section.

A8

叹interjection of surprise; Ah!; Oh!

名romance; love (romantic)

名compassion; kindness; care for others

动to do a security check; security check (abbr. for 安全检查)

动to arrange; to plan; to set up

动、介to press; to push; to leave aside or shelve

副on time; before deadline; on schedule

介according to; in accordance with; on the basis of

B50

名baijiu, a spirit usually distilled from sorghum; (Tw) white wine (abbr. for 白葡萄酒)

动to handle official business (usu. in an office); to do (office) work

动to handle; to transact; to conduct

动to handle (affairs); to work

形、（名）stick; club; cudgel

动to protect; to defend; to safeguard

动、名to guarantee; to ensure; to safeguard

动to hold; to carry (in one's arms); to hug

动to enter oneself for an examination

动to sign up; to enter one's name; to apply

形to be sorry; to feel apologetic; sorry!

动to carry on one's back

Words 1–20 of 1,000 · page 1 of 50 · tap a word to hear it

How many words does HSK 4 add?

HSK 4 adds 1,000 words to the HSK 3.0 syllabus — 9% of all 11,000 — and brings the total you need to 2,000.

Nouns 名
465
Verbs 动
366
Adjectives 形
161
Adverbs 副
93
Measure words 量
32
Pronouns 代
11
Numbers 数
3
Function words 虚词
47

Which HSK 4 words matter most?

Nothing in the syllabus says which words to learn first — it grades them into nine levels and stops there. So the list measures something outside the exam instead: how often each word turns up in everyday Chinese.

322 of them (32%) are among the most common words in everyday Chinese — roughly one in every ten thousand words you meet. The most common at this level:

  • 为wéi
  • 与yǔ
  • 而ér
  • 等děng
  • 并bìng
  • 将jiāng
  • 着zháo
  • 之zhī
  • 由yóu
  • 就是jiùshì
  • 社会shèhuì
  • 进行jìnxíng

And the most common nouns, verbs and adjectives among them — the ones worth learning first:

  • 为wéi
  • 着zháo
  • 社会shèhuì
  • 进行jìnxíng
  • 计划jìhuà
  • 成为chéngwéi
  • 国际guójì
  • 内nèi
  • 经济jīngjì
  • 使用shǐyòng
  • 活动huódòng
  • 情况qíngkuàng

The three bars are how often the word turns up in everyday Chinese, from wordfreq’s mixed corpus of subtitles, news, books and Wikipedia — three bars is roughly one word in ten thousand. The syllabus itself marks no key words, so this is an outside measure, not an official one, and it counts written forms: a word spelled like a commoner one (等, 打) reads higher than it is.

HSK 4 vocabulary: HSK 2.0 vs HSK 3.0

Under HSK 2.0, HSK 4 added 600 words, for 1,200 in total. The HSK 3.0 syllabus adds 1,000 at Level 4 and expects 2,000 by the end of it — 800 more words in total, 1.7 times the old list.

Words, HSK 2.0 against HSK 3.0HSK 2.0HSK 3.0 syllabus
LevelWordsChange
Added at HSK 4
600
1,000
+400 · ×1.7
Total by the end of HSK 4
1,200
2,000
+800 · ×1.7

HSK 4 vocabulary FAQ

Is HSK 3.0 the same as HSK Level 3?

No. HSK 3.0 is the version of the exam: CTI published its syllabus in November 2025, in force from July 2026. HSK Level 3 is one of the nine levels inside it. This page is the HSK 3.0 list for HSK 4; HSKWin tracks when each level’s sittings switch to 3.0 on its status page.

HSK 3.0 status tracker

How long does it take to learn the 1,000 HSK 4 words?

At one round of 20 new words a day — the pace the flashcards deal them — you meet all 1,000 in about 50 days. They then bring each word back after a day, three days, a week and three weeks, so the last ones need about three more weeks to settle: roughly 10 weeks in all.

Do I need the HSK 1–3 words as well?

Yes. Each level’s list only adds to the ones below it, and the exam assumes all of them: HSK 4 expects 2,000 words in total — the 1,000 on this page plus 1,000 from HSK 1–3. Switch the list to “with earlier levels” to see them together.

Why do other lists give a different word count for HSK 4?

Three counts circulate. The old HSK 2.0 asked for 1,200 words by the end of HSK 4. The 2021 standard (GF0025-2021) gives 3,245 — the figure many sites still quote. The exam syllabus CTI published in November 2025, which this list follows, gives 2,000. The papers are written from the syllabus, so it is the list to learn.

Other HSK vocabulary lists

HSK 1 vocabularyHSK 2 vocabularyHSK 3 vocabularyHSK 4 vocabularyHSK 5 vocabularyHSK 6 vocabularyHSK 7–9 vocabulary
HSK 4 mock testHSK 4 flashcardsHSK 4 reading practice

After a HSK 4 mock test, put your section scores into the HSK score calculator to check the total against the pass mark and see which section the words need to help most.

Word list, pinyin and part of speech: 《中文水平考试（HSK）考试大纲》, published by CTI in November 2025 and in force from July 2026 — 11,000 words, the same document the papers here are built against. English glosses from CC-CEDICT, used under CC BY-SA 4.0. How common each word is comes from wordfreq by Robyn Speer, whose Chinese data is drawn from film subtitles (OpenSubtitles, SUBTLEX-CH by Marc Brysbaert and colleagues, freely available), Wikipedia, news and books, and is used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Pronunciation plays the word’s own audio clip, generated with a Mandarin text-to-speech voice; where a clip is not available, your browser’s Chinese voice reads the word instead.