小时候
xiǎo shí hou · HSK 2
in one's childhood
👶 小 (small) + 时候 (time) = the small-time, i.e. childhood
小 means small/young; 时候 means a period of time. Together 小时候 literally reads as the small-time period of life — the years when you were young. Common in sentences like 我小时候很喜欢… (When I was little, I really liked…).
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.
时 — sun 日 + temple/measure 寺
Originally a phono-semantic compound: 日 (sun) gives the meaning of time or season, while 寺 (shí) supplies the sound. Early forms used 之 as the phonetic before 寺 replaced it. The core sense 'season, time, hour' has stayed stable since ancient Chinese.