小
Meanings
CC-CEDICT
- 1.small
- 2.tiny
- 3.few
- 4.young
CC-CEDICT · CC BY-SA
Wiktionary
- 1.small, tiny, little
- 2.minor, petty
- 3.briefly, for a short while
- 4.slightly, a little
- 5.young
- 6.youngest
- 7.a young person; child, kid, baby
- 8.Prefix used in front of family name to indicate informality or affection (for young people, 老 (lǎo) for elder people).
- 9.my, our
- 10.short for 小學／小学 (xiǎoxué, “primary school”)
- 11.Used in the abbreviation of the name of a primary school.
- 12.Used with a number to indicate the level of primary education.
- 13.concubine
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Etymology
Two possible interpretations: * Ideogram (指事) – three small dots > small. * Pictogram (象形) – three granules of sand – original character of 沙 (OC *sraːl, *sraːls) > small. Starting from some bronze inscriptions, the dots have become elongated. Based on this form, Shuowen erroneously considers it to be an ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 八 (“to divide; to separate”) + 丨 (“small object”). Compare with 少 (OC *hmjewʔ, *hmjews), represented by four dots in its oracle bone script form. Unrelated to the bottom part of 京, 示, 尞, 尗, and 原. Often thought to be related to 少 (OC *hmjewʔ, *hmjews) (e.g. Wang, 1982), but Schuessler (2007) points out that the alternation between Middle Chinese /s-/ and /ɕ-/ within a word family is exceptional.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Stroke order
Components
Components from cjk-decomp · MIT
Example sentences
这本书小。
This book is small.
汤姆手小。
Tom has small hands.
這是箇小鎮。
This is a small town.
把它弄小一點。
Make it smaller.
我的船是小的。
My boat is small.
把火轉小一點。
Turn the flame down low.
Sentences from Tatoeba · CC-BY 2.0 FR
More examples & usage (AI)
Synonyms
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Derived terms
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA