口碑
koǔ bēi · HSK 7
public reputation
🗣️🪦 口碑 = 口 mouth + 碑 stone tablet: a monument built by people's mouths, word-of-mouth fame
口 (kǒu) means mouth and 碑 (bēi) is an inscribed stone tablet or monument. Together: the reputation that the public engraves through talk, your word-of-mouth standing. Compare English word-of-mouth.
口 — pictograph of an open mouth
口 is one of the oldest pictographs in Chinese, originally drawn as a simple outline of an open mouth. Its core meaning 'mouth' extended naturally to 'opening' or 'entrance', as in 入口 (entrance). It also serves as a common radical in characters related to speech, eating, or apertures.
碑 — stone 石 + low/humble 卑 (phonetic)
碑 is a semantic-phonetic compound: 石 'stone' gives the meaning, while 卑 (bēi) supplies the sound. Originally it referred to upright stones used at graves or palaces to tether animals or mark events; it later came to mean an inscribed stone tablet or monument.