Eitthvað and svolítið both translate to something in English; that’s just begging for a clarifying article. Let’s make these words a little easier to tell apart!
The core difference is this: with eitthvað the speaker doesn’t know what the “something” is, while with svolítið they do know.
Here are some examples.
If you’ve been mixing these up for ages and are now kicking yourself for sounding silly, let yourself off the hook. This is one of those things that feels super obvious once somebody’s pointed it out, but is really hard for the learner to notice in the first place.
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