穿小鞋
chuān xiǎo xié · HSK 7
to make life difficult for sb
👟😣 wear small shoes = someone forces tight shoes on you = making life hard
穿 (wear) + 小 (small) + 鞋 (shoes). If someone hands you shoes two sizes too small, every step hurts. The idiom means deliberately giving someone a hard time, like a petty boss assigning impossible deadlines.
穿 — cave 穴 on top + tooth 牙 below
Originally a compound suggesting a tooth (牙) boring through a cave or hole (穴), giving the core sense of 'pierce through' or 'penetrate'. From this came extended meanings like 'pass through', 'wear (clothes)' — i.e. pass the body through fabric — and 'bore a hole'.
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.
鞋 — leather radical 革 + 圭 (phonetic)
鞋 is a phono-semantic compound. The leather radical 革 on the left signals the meaning, since shoes were traditionally made of leather or hide. The right side 圭 supplies the sound, giving the modern reading xié. The character has long meant 'shoe' in everyday use.