小吃
xiǎo chī · HSK 4
snack
🍡 小 (small) + 吃 (eat) = small eat = snack
小 means small and 吃 means to eat, so 小吃 literally reads as small-eat — the everyday term for snacks or light street-food bites sold by the 家 (shop/stall).
小 — three small strokes around a central vertical
小 is a pictograph originally showing three tiny dots or specks, suggesting small particles or grains. Over time the dots became stylized strokes flanking a central line. The core meaning 'small' has stayed remarkably stable from oracle bone script to today.
吃 — mouth 口 + beg 乞
A semantic-phonetic compound: 口 (mouth) gives the meaning 'to eat,' while 乞 (qǐ, 'to beg') hints at the sound. The original character for 'eat' was 喫; 吃 first meant 'to stutter' but was later adopted as the standard simplified form for 'to eat.'