Example sentences
kāi开shǐ始le了。
It's starting.
cóng从tóu头kāi开shǐ始。
Start from the beginning.
About this word
开 is "to open" and 始 is "beginning", so 开始 is "to open the beginning", working as both verb and noun: 开始上课, 一个新的开始. Chinese marks starts with 开 across a whole family: 开学 (school starts), 开业 (a business opens), 开工 (work begins). Because it is a verb, another verb can follow it directly, which is how you say "begin to do something": 开始学习, 开始下雨了.
The story behind the character
开
The traditional 開 is two doors with a horizontal bar across the middle. The latch. Pull the latch out and the door opens. Simplified 开 dropped the doors but kept the opening.
始
始 is 女 (woman) with 台 on the right supplying the sound. Xu Shen's definition makes you sit up: 始, 女之初也, "the beginning of a woman." Girlhood. The start of a woman's life became the word for every other kind of beginning. So 开始 is built on a young woman standing at the front of hers.