Chinese Character Wiki
小

xiǎo

small

Depicts three small dots, representing the meaning "small". Originally the same character as 少. The small dots possibly represent grains of sand (沙).

Evolution

小 Oracle script (~1250-1000 BC)

Oracle script

(~1250-1000 BC)
小 Bronze script Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)

Bronze script

Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)
小 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
小 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
小 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

小  

xiǎo

small, tiny, insignificant; small; tiny; few; young

Most common words with 小
Freq.
Word
Meaning

小

small

小时

hour

小姐

miss

小心

to be careful

小子

(coll.) boy

Component uses

Meaning component in 10 characters (2 verified)

孙 肖 尖 尘 雀 隙 尕 尜 㣎 尗

Sound component in 3 characters (1 verified)

肖 齋 県

Iconic component in 2 characters (2 verified)

𭕆 𧴪

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*[s]ewʔ

sjewX

xiǎo

small


Statistics

HSK level 1

Appears in 99.7757% of movies

82nd most common character in movies

83rd most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

3

Unicode

U+5C0F

Shuowen

“小，物之微也。从八，丨見而分之。”


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Creative Commons License