Other forms: smaller, smallest
Small is the plain word for not big. A small room, a small dog, a small mistake — it works for size, for amount, and for importance, and it is the first of these words a learner needs.
Small and little overlap, but they are not swappable. Small is a measurement and takes comparison naturally: smaller, smallest, a size smaller. Little carries feeling as well as size — a little dog is small and fond, a small dog is only small — and little resists comparison, which is why you say smaller rather than littler. Small also goes where little cannot: small print, small change, a small business. Watch the fixed phrases, because they take one or the other and never both.
1adjectivesmallNot large in size.~58%
“They live in a small flat above the bakery.”
2adjectiveamountNot large in amount or number.~23%
“A small number of people objected.”
3adjectiveimportantNot important, or not serious.~2%
“It was a small mistake and nobody minded.”
4adjectivebusinessOf a business or organisation, having few people and little money.~17%
“The scheme was designed to help small businesses through the winter.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 19 sentences found in the wild and placed 17 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
small is a size.
Also accepted in games: little
Old English smæl did not mean small at all — it meant narrow or slender, and it still does in the languages next door: Dutch smal and German schmal both mean narrow. English widened the sense to cover size in every direction, and then needed a new word for narrow, which is why the old one now sounds odd in its first job.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)mal- — small; little
Proto-Germanic
*smalaz — small
Proto-West Germanic
*smal
Old English
smæl — narrow, slim; slender; fine; small; quiet
Middle English
smal
English, today
small
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”). 2 Cognate with Scots smaw (“small; minor”), yol smaale, small (“small”), frr smaal, smeel, smääl (“narrow”), stq smäl (“narrow”), West Frisian smel (“narrow”), gsw schmaal (“narrow”), bar schmoi (“narrow; slender”), Dutch smal (“narrow; small”), German schmal (“narrow; slender”), Low German small (“narrow; slender, small”), lb schmuel (“narrow”), wym śmoł, šmoł (“narrow”), Yiddish שמאָל (“narrow”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish smal (“narrow; slim”), Gothic 𐍃𐌼𐌰𐌻𐌹𐍃𐍄𐍃 (“smallest”); also Latin malus (“bad, distressing, nasty; evil, mischievous, wicked; destructive, hurtful, noxious; abusive, hostile, unkind”), be малы́ (“small”), Bulgarian and mk мал (“small; minor”), Czech and Slovak malý (“small”), Polish mały (“small; little; humble; short”), Russian ма́лый (“small; short”), Serbo-Croatian ма̑л, mȃl (“small”), Ukrainian мали́й (“small”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA