Meaning & readings
place on the head, receive, top of head, top, summit, peak
Origin
This character combines two parts. The right side, 頁, is a classifying radical meaning "head" or "face" — it groups this character with other words about the head. The left side, 丁, acts as a sound hint suggesting how the character is pronounced. Together, the combination originally meant the top of the head, which is where you receive things or balance them — hence the meanings expanded to include "to receive," "summit," or "peak," any kind of topmost point. The shape thus pictures the idea of something at the highest point of the head, which came to represent any kind of top or peak.
Components
- 丁
- 頁
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 181
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1350 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+09802