small
/smoːl/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.51 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Not large or big; insignificant; few in number.
adj
Not large or big; insignificant; few in number.
adj
Not large or big; insignificant; few in number.
adj
Synonym of little (“of an industry or institution(s) therein: operating on a small scale, unlike larger counterparts”).
Example Sentences
- "A small serving of ice cream."
- "A small group."
- "Here, in the transept and choir, where the service was being held, one was conscious every moment of an increasing brightness; colours glowing vividly beneath the circular chandeliers, and the rows of small lights on the choristers' desks flashed and sparkled in front of the boys' faces, deep linen collars, and red neckbands."
- "Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers. Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets is only a small part of what leveraged buy-outs are about, they insist. Improving the workings of the businesses they take over is just as core to their calling, if not more so. Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster."
- "The orbiter has been observing the moon since 2009, and its reflector is a smaller version of reflector panels placed on the lunar surface during the Apollo 11, 14 and 15 landings on the moon. Soviet lunar robotic landers sent in 1970 and 1973 also carried smaller reflectors."
- "Guinness World Record confirmed the micro-cube as the world’s smallest rotating puzzle cube in August."
Etymology
From Middle English smal, smale, small, smalle, smel, smæl, from Old English smæl (“narrow, slim; slender; fine; small; quiet”), from Proto-West Germanic *smal, from Proto-Germanic *smalaz (“small”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)mal- (“small; little”). Cognates Cognate with Scots smaw (“small; minor”), Yola smaale, small (“small”), North Frisian smaal, smeel, smääl (“narrow”), Saterland Frisian smäl (“narrow”), West Frisian smel (“narrow”), Alemannic German schmaal (“narrow”), Bavarian schmoi (“narrow; slender”), Dutch smal (“narrow; small”), German schmal (“narrow; slender”), Low German small (“narrow; slender, small”), Luxembourgish schmuel (“narrow”), Vilamovian śmoł, šmoł (“narrow”), Yiddish שמאָל (shmol, “narrow”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish smal (“narrow; slim”), Gothic 𐍃𐌼𐌰𐌻𐌹𐍃𐍄𐍃 (smalists, “smallest”); also Latin malus (“bad, distressing, nasty; evil, mischievous, wicked; destructive, hurtful, noxious; abusive, hostile, unkind”), Belarusian малы́ (malý, “small”), Bulgarian and Macedonian мал (mal, “small; minor”), Czech and Slovak malý (“small”), Polish mały (“small; little; humble; short”), Russian ма́лый (mályj, “small; short”), Serbo-Croatian ма̑л, mȃl (“small”), Ukrainian мали́й (malýj, “small”).
Origin
- Source language: Middle English
- First known use: First attested in the 1200s
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /smoːl/
- British English: /smɔːl/