Definitions

bēi pool; pond; bank of a pond; mountain slope; Taiwan pr. [pí]
used in 黃陂|黄陂[huáng pí] (the name of a place in Hubei)
rugged; uneven

Etymology phono-semantic

hill

Semantic: Phonetic:

About

(bēi, pō) is a phono-semantic compound: the radical 'mound, dam' on the left, and the phonetic (pí) on the right. Its meanings vary with pronunciation: as bēi, it originally denoted an artificial reservoir, dammed pool, or reinforced banks of an irrigation pond; as pō, it describes a rugged, uneven hillside or sloping mountain terrain, reflecting both water management and the elevated landform of its radical.

Etymology Hide

Bronze etymology image
Bronze Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)
Seal etymology image
Seal Shuowen (~100 AD)
Traditional Modern
Simplified Modern