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Mythic Mandarin

不如 (bù rú): meaning and stroke order

不如 (bù rú) means not equal to; not as good as; inferior to, it would be better to.

不如

Simplified
不如
Traditional
不如 (same form)
Pinyin
bù rú

Stroke order of 不如

不

  • bù no; not so; (bound form) not; un-
  • 4 strokes

Stroke by stroke

如

  • rú as; as if
  • 6 strokes

Stroke by stroke

Meaning of 不如

  1. bù rú
    • not equal to; not as good as; inferior to
    • it would be better to

Radicals of the characters

不
Radical 一 (Kangxi radical 1) · 4 strokes · built from 丆 and 卜
如
Radical 女 (Kangxi radical 38) · 6 strokes · 女 on the left, 口 on the right

Radicals and stroke counts: Unicode Unihan database. Structure: the shapes a character is written with (BabelStone IDS), not necessarily parts that carry meaning or sound.

不如 in our stories

Preview version — Chinese review in progress.

  • 奶奶摸摸他的头：“其实，与其让灶王爷替你说好话，不如你自己先去跟妹妹道歉。”

    nǎinai mō mō tā de tóu qíshí yǔqí ràng Zàowángyé tì nǐ shuō hǎohuà bùrú nǐ zìjǐ xiān qù gēn mèimei dàoqiàn

    Grandma stroked his head: "You know, rather than having the Kitchen God put in a good word for you, it's better to go and apologise to your sister yourself."

    From the story Sweets for the Kitchen God HSK 5

  • 与其花半年写软件，不如先做个简单的试验。

    yǔqí huā bàn nián xiě ruǎnjiàn bùrú xiān zuò gè jiǎndān de shìyàn

    Rather than spend six months writing software, they decided, better to run a simple test first.

    From the story Fifty sheets of paper HSK 5

  • 他发现，水总是往低处流；与其拦住它，不如给它找一条出路。

    tā fāxiàn shuǐ zǒngshì wǎng dīchù liú yǔqí lán zhù tā bùrú gěi tā zhǎo yì tiáo chūlù

    He saw that water always flows downhill: rather than stopping it, better to give it a way out.

    From the story Yu the Great tames the flood HSK 6

Stories using 不如

Dictionary data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0). Stroke data: Hanzi Writer data, derived from Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License). Animation: Hanzi Writer (MIT licence). Radicals and stroke counts: Unicode Unihan (Unicode License v3).