This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
小
In brief: the image of yin and yang parting and dispersing
Common reading
Pictographic. According to the oracle-bone form it depicts grains of sand; the small seal analyses it as compound-ideative, from 八 and from 丨. Original sense: fine, minute, the opposite of 大. Shuowen: “小 means the smallness of things.” Book of Changes, “Tai”: “The small goes, the great comes.” Commentary: “Yin arises and is consumed, so it is called small.”
Design reading
The vertical hook goes down but has not yet vanished; something still remains. The image of yin and yang separating, breaking up and dispersing is 小.
Related characters
About this entry
This entry is taken from the edited manuscript of LI Xutong’s Exploring the Design Mysteries of Chinese Characters. The common reading follows traditional philology, the Shuowen Jiezi and other classics, and modern dictionaries; the design reading recovers the rationale of the character’s formation from the meanings of its strokes, the pairing of yin and yang, and the nine-palace layout, following the New Six Scripts. The premise of the design reading, that the generative mechanism of Chinese characters was designed, is an axiom of this system and differs from the evolutionary account usual in philology; the two readings are kept apart, as surface and depth.