What it means
کوچکی (kuchaki) is the noun form of کوچک (kuchak, small). Like its mirror word bozorgi, it leaves the physical and lives in the moral. Kuchaki carries two valences that English does not naturally pair: pettiness (the bad smallness, picking fights, holding grudges, refusing to forgive) and humility (the good smallness, knowing your place before an elder, lowering yourself out of respect).
Context decides which is meant. کوچکی نکن (kuchaki nakon) said to a sulking adult means do not be petty, do not stoop. کوچکی کردم پیش پدرم (kuchaki kardam pish-e pedaram) said reflectively means I made myself small before my father, I deferred, I gave him his due.
Kuchaki and bozorgi
The pair bozorgi/kuchaki is one of the load-bearing moral binaries in everyday Iranian Persian. Bozorgi is the magnanimity of rising above, kuchaki is either the failure to rise (pettiness) or the deliberate self-lowering before someone who deserves it (humility). The same word holds both, and Iranians switch between them by context without needing to mark the shift.
The humility reading
کوچکی کردن (kuchaki kardan) in front of an elder is not weakness. It is the recognition that you are not the bozorgtar in this room. You take a smaller chair. You speak less. You serve first. This is the same gesture as forutani (modesty) and tavazo (humility), but rendered in everyday family vocabulary.
Examples
kuchaki nakon, bezar bere.
Don’t be petty, let it go.
کوچکی نکن، بزار بره.
pish-e bozorgtarha bayad kuchaki kard.
In front of elders, one must show humility.
پیش بزرگترها باید کوچکی کرد.
Where it comes from
Kuchaki is built from کوچک (kuchak, small) plus the abstract suffix -ی (-i), the same suffix that gives bozorgi from bozorg, khubi from khub. The literal meaning is smallness in the physical sense, but the moral readings carry the everyday weight. Persian routinely lets size-words do double duty as character-words; the language assumes the leap is obvious.
In our voice
One word, two opposite moral colors. That is not a flaw of Persian. It is the language refusing to flatten a real distinction: smallness is a sin when chosen out of spite and a virtue when chosen out of respect.
References
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