Dictionary › 刚才

刚才

gāng cái

Old HSK 3 HSK 3.0 level 3 2-character word Traditional 剛才

刚才 (gāng cái) means "just now". It is an HSK 3.0 level 3 word, and was HSK 3 in the old six-level list.

What 刚才 means

1. just now
2. a moment ago

Other readings

刚才 is 多音字 — it is read more than one way, and the reading changes the meaning.

• gāng cáijust now (variant of {刚才|gāng cái})

The characters in 刚才

• 刚gāng(literary) hard; firm; strong; exactly; precisely; barely; only just
• 才cáiability; talent; sb of a certain type; a capable individual

Example sentences

• 我刚才吐了。
  I just threw up.
• 他刚才到了。
  He had just arrived.
• 我刚才在家。
  I was at home.
• 刚才开始下雪。
  It began snowing just now.
• 我刚才起床了。
  I just got up.
• 我刚才在洗澡.
  I was just in the shower.

Sounds the same

Read gāng cái, tone for tone, but written differently.

• 钢材steel (as raw material); steel sheets, bars, tubes, ingots, wire etc

Where 刚才 is taught

In the GraphChinese course it is part of Seasons, Weather & Time Words (HSK 3), each one a topic in the dependency graph of HSK 1–6 that opens only once its prerequisites are solid.

Go deeper

• Every HSK 3 word, with the rest of its level.
• The four tones and the neutral tone, to read gāng cái correctly.
• Look up another word in the free dictionary.