King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Chinese symbol for “appetizer”

小菜
xiǎo cài
appetizer; small side dish; easy job; piece of cake

The closest CC-CEDICT match for appetizer is 小菜 (xiǎo cài), defined as: appetizer; small side dish; easy job; piece of cake; see also 小菜一碟 (xiǎo cài yī dié).

Before using these characters for a tattoo, check them with a native speaker. Dictionary words often have several meanings, and the right choice depends on context.

Characters and stroke order

小 xiǎo
small, tiny, insignificant
radical 42 ⼩ · 3 strokes
菜 cài
vegetables; order, dish; food
radical 140 ⾋ · 12 strokes

Other Chinese words for “appetizer”

WordPinyinMeaning
前菜qián càiappetizer; starter; hors d'oeuvre
开胃菜 (開胃菜)kāi wèi càistarter; appetizer
冷盆lěng péncold dish; appetizer

Related words

Other words that share a character with 小菜.

WordPinyinMeaning
小时 (小時)xiǎo shíhour
小说 (小說)xiǎo shuōnovel; fiction
小学 (小學)xiǎo xuéelementary school; primary school
小姐xiǎo jieyoung lady; miss
小组 (小組)xiǎo zǔgroup
小孩xiǎo háichild; 个 (gè)
蔬菜shū càivegetables
菜单 (菜單)cài dānmenu; measure word: 份 (fèn), 张 (zhāng)

See also: Japanese symbol for “appetizer”.

Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3); Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License (graphics.txt); LGPL-3.0-or-later (dictionary.txt)); wordfreq (CC BY-SA 4.0 (data)). Retrieved 2026-10-22.

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