The monk Zhiyi founded the Tiantai school of Buddhism.
Tips
history
顗 is not used as an independent word in modern Chinese. It survives almost entirely as a personal-name character — most famously the Sui-dynasty monk 智顗, founder of the Tiantai Buddhist school. It combines the leaf/head radical 页 with the phonetic 岂.
register
Archaic and literary only; today encountered chiefly in classical names, not in speech or ordinary writing.
Components
radical
頁yè
head; page
The head radical (traditional 頁, simplified 页) groups this with chars about the head and, by extension, bearing or demeanor — fitting the 'respectful manner' sense.
phonetic
豈qǐ
how; surely not
Supplies the sound. The traditional full form 豈 (modern simplified 岂) gives the phonetic skeleton; the reading has drifted to yǐ.
