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Etymology data from Wiktionary via Wiktextract (CC BY-SA 4.0). Chinese character data from the 說文解字, the Taiwan MOE 國語辭典簡編本 (CC BY-ND 3.0 TW) and HSK/TOCFL lists.

Explanations are written by a local model (gemma4) and only published after a verification pass against the cited sources. How it works.

Chinese

頁

yè
sheet (of paper)
  • Pictogram
  • HSK 1
  • TOCFL 5
  • radical 頁
  • 9 strokes
  • 葉
  • 叶

Etymology graph

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  • borrowed
  • derived
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  • meaning component
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Origin

Etymology 1

Pictogram (象形): 首 + 卩 – head of a kneeling person, emphasising “head”.

頁 and 首 (OC *hljuʔ, *hljus) were originally the same pictographic character with the same meaning of “head”, and the graphical difference was that 頁 also included the body in addition to the head of the person.

頁 was later used as an alternative popular form of 葉 (“leaf; page”) to mean “sheet; page (of paper)”, which is its main meaning today.

The original sense of “head” is preserved in the radical 頁, which is used in characters such as 頭 (“head”) and 頸 (“neck”).

Alternative form of 葉 /叶 (“leaf; sheet (of paper)”).

Etymology 2

Original meaning of this character.

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • componentChinese首 “head”
  • componentChinese卩 “kneeling person”

Words built on it: 頭, 夏, 題, 須, 領, 願, 項, 煩, 頓, 順

Meanings

character
  1. sheet (of paper)
  2. page
  3. Classifier for pages.
  4. to flip through (a book, document, etc.)
  5. a surname, Ye

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

頁：頭也。从𦣻从儿。古文䭫首如此。凡頁之屬皆从頁。𦣻者，䭫首字也。

Xu Shen, c. 100 CE — the first analytical dictionary of Chinese characters.

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 紙張。 例：活頁、冊頁
  2. 量詞。計算書籍文件面數的單位。 例：我看了三頁書。

© Ministry of Education, Taiwan — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW, shown unaltered.

How 頁 was written 字形演變

  1. 頁 in Oracle bone script
    Oracle bone
    甲骨文
    Shang, c. 1250–1050 BCE
  2. 頁 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  3. 頁 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  4. 頁 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 頁 in Regular script
    Regular
    楷書
    since c. 200 CE

Historical forms collected by the legacy etymfun dataset; most characters have several attested variants.

Sources

  • Historical glyph forms (zdic.net 字形演变) — Rights unverified
  • HSK / TOCFL word lists — Facts (levels)
  • 教育部《國語辭典簡編本》 (Taiwan MOE) — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW
  • 說文解字 Shuowen Jiezi (Xu Shen, c. 100 CE) — Public domain
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 頁