I use www.jisho.org for my Japanese queries, and MDBG for most of my Chinese questions. I like the Skritter button incorporated into the MDBG site... makes it darn convenient to add new words to my queue, but I'm already off topic.

My question is: When the "HSK x" moniker shows up next to a word, does that mean essentially that it's a common word? Does it mean that "HSK x" words are more worthwhile to add to the queue versus those that don't?

I predict the answer is "yes" but you guys surely know more than me.

Thanks,
JCD

It depends which HSK level it says, but essentially yes. HSK 1 is the easiest/most common (broadly speaking, because there are disagreements about how to define the most common or useful words). However, I wouldn't say that non-HSK words are less useful, just that HSK may indicate words likely to be useful.

Thanks for the feedback. At jisho.org, they have green text "Common word" under the, uh, common words. I use this as a guide (or at least should have) for whether or not to add a word to my queue. I sort of found myself doing the same with the "HSK x" moniker at MDBG. Maybe I shouldn't.

HSK words are still missing many common words, and include some that are not common at all. But it's still a useful indicator. The frequency list that Skritter uses to generate things like "easy", "medium", "harder", etc., are better, but of course you can't see those on MDBG.

I use it to the extent that, if I'm looking for the Chinese translation of an English word and MDBG gives several choices, I will generally choose the one that's an HSK word.