Left
皮 supplies the sound — pí drifting to pō through regular Old Chinese tone-and-rounding shift. Same phonetic family:
波 wave,
破 break,
坡 slope,
婆 old woman. Pure phonetic loan; the 'skin' meaning contributes nothing. The original sense of
颇 was a head leaning to one side, hence 'biased' — now the degree-marker 'rather'.
