adjective #38,918

Meanings

  1. 1 little; small (northwestern dialect)

Examples

Xīběi rén qīnqiè de guǎn xiǎo háizi jiào gǎwá.
In the northwest, people fondly call a little child 'gawazi'.

Tips

history
is a northwestern dialect word ('small / little / cute') with no use in standard Mandarin, where is used. It is built as over , appearing in regional names and words like ('little kid').
register
Dialectal only — Gansu, Qinghai and Ningxia speech and personal names; not used in formal or standard written Chinese.

Components

radical
xiǎo
small
'small' is the semantic radical at the bottom and directly carries the meaning — the whole character means 'little' in dialect.
phonetic
nǎi
then; thereupon
on top gives a loose phonetic hint for gǎ; it carries none of its usual meaning here.

Stroke Order