木头
mù tou · HSK 3
log
🪵 木 (wood) + 头 (head) = wooden-head, i.e. blockhead or a log
木 means wood/tree and 头 means head. Together 木头 literally reads as wooden-head, which carries both the literal sense of a log of timber and the figurative sense of someone slow-witted or dense.
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'.