页

Etymology & Components

The Chinese character 页 (yè) is composed of two parts: the radical 阜 (fù), which means "mound" or "hill", and the phonetic component 页 (yè), which is a simplified form of the character 葉 (yè), meaning "leaf". The combination of these two components suggests the image of a leaf growing on a mound or hill, hence the meaning of "page" or "leaf".In ancient times, pages were made from thin slices of bamboo or wood, which were then bound together to form a book. The character 页 was originally used to refer to these bamboo or wooden slips, and later extended to mean "page" in general. It is also used in the sense of "leaf" in some contexts, such as in the phrase 一页纸 (yī yè zhǐ), meaning "a sheet of paper".The character 页 has several variant forms, including 葉 (yè), 頁 (yè), and 页 (yè). The simplified form 页 is the most commonly used in modern Chinese.