抬头
táitóu · HSK 5
raise one's head
🙆♂️ 抬 (lift) + 头 (head) = lift your head
抬 means to lift or raise, and 头 means head. Together 抬头 literally is lift-head — raising one's head. Extended senses: gain ground, improve, or prices going up, since something that was down is now coming up.
抬 — hand radical 扌 + 台 (tái, phonetic)
抬 is a phono-semantic compound. The hand radical 扌 signals an action done with the hands, while 台 (tái) supplies the sound. Together they convey 'to lift' or 'to raise with the hands,' a meaning that has stayed stable in modern Mandarin.
头 — 页 (head/page) + 豆 (bean, phonetic)
The traditional form 頭 combines 頁 (xié), meaning 'head', with 豆 (dòu) as the phonetic component. 頁 itself originally depicted a person with an emphasized head. The simplified form 头 is a modern shorthand that replaces 豆+頁 with a simpler shape while keeping the same meaning of 'head' or 'top'.