He's absent-minded.
CHINESE DICTIONARY ENTRY
心不在焉
absent-minded
IN A VIDEO心不在焉
See this word with its surrounding sentence, pinyin, translation, and timestamp.
DEFINITIONS & USAGE
Meaning and common use
01
absent-minded
02
preoccupied
03
inattentive
04
with one's thoughts wandering
REAL CORPUS EXAMPLES
How 心不在焉 actually appears in real sentences.
These sentences are copied from the Tatoeba corpus, so they are real usage rather than generated text. 心不在焉 appears in 14 of the 89,190 sentences we searched.
He had his head in the clouds in class.
By lack of attention, she hit the post with her car.
COMMON COLLOCATIONS
Words that keep company with 心不在焉.
Counted from the same corpus: the word that most often comes directly before, and directly after, 心不在焉.
Directly before
- 她心不在焉2
- 是心不在焉2
- 时心不在焉2
- 上心不在焉1
- 他心不在焉1
Directly after
- 心不在焉的2
- 心不在焉吧1
- 心不在焉啊1
- 心不在焉地应1
ABOUT THIS ENTRY
Where this entry comes from
The HSK level, part of speech, and pronunciation come from the HSK 3.1 vocabulary syllabus. The English definitions come from CC-CEDICT. Corpus sentences, collocations, and the frequency figure come from the Tatoeba Chinese sentence export and are counted rather than written, so nothing on this page is invented. Usage notes and the hand-written examples that appear higher up exist only for a handful of entries.
Definitions from CC-CEDICT, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Vocabulary levels and parts of speech from the HSK 3.1 syllabus. This compiled dictionary is shared under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
COMMON QUESTIONS
About 心不在焉
What does 心不在焉 mean in Chinese?
心不在焉 (xīnbùzàiyān) means absent-minded.
How do you pronounce 心不在焉?
心不在焉 is pronounced xīnbùzàiyān.
Is 心不在焉 an HSK word?
心不在焉 is on the list of the HSK 3.1 vocabulary syllabus.
SEE IT IN CONTEXT
Upload a videoTurn your own Chinese video into a searchable learning file.
Keep English optional, place pinyin above Hanzi, and export subtitles named after your video.