■ radical

tí

forehead

How it’s built

Phonosemantic compound. 頁 represents the meaning and 是 represents the sound. The character is based on the original meaning "forehead", which is unrelated to the modern meaning.

頁

meaning

leaf; page; (head)

是

sound

is; to be — The pronunciation of 題 was similar to 是 in old Chinese, but they no longer sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes.

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