The Chinese word 小吃 (xiǎochī) is a compound noun formed by combining the adjective 小 (xiǎo), meaning "small" or "minor," with the verb 吃 (chī), which means "to eat." Together, they create a new, fixed lexical meaning that refers not literally to the act of eating something small, but to a category of food: "snacks" or "small eats." This is a standard pattern in Mandarin where a modifier (小) is placed before a verbal element (吃) to nominalize it, defining a type of food characterized by being light, casual, and often served in portions smaller than a main meal. Thus, the term semantically shifts from the literal "to eat small" to the conceptual "small dishes to eat."