头 (tóu): head

Meanings

1 head
2 hair style
3 top
4 end
5 chief; boss
6 first; leading
7 classifier for livestock

Characters

头

tóu

head; top; chief

Examples

我头疼。

Wǒ tóuténg.

I have a headache.

他点了点头。

Tā diǎn le diǎntóu.

He nodded.

从头开始。

Cóng tóu kāishǐ.

Start over from the beginning.

农夫养了三头牛。

Nóngfū yǎng le sān tóu niú.

The farmer raised three head of cattle.

Tips

usage

tóu 头 stretches from the literal head — 头发 (hair), 头疼 (headache) — to anything at the top or front: 山头 (mountaintop), 街头 (street corner), 头条 (headline). It also names the chief — 头目 (ringleader), 工头 (foreman) — and as a measure word counts livestock: 一头牛 (one cow), 一头猪 (one pig).

mistakes

Two readings, same character. Full-tone 头 is the noun (head, top, chief, classifier). Toneless tou is a suffix that turns a root into a noun: 木头 (wood), 石头 (stone), 里头 (inside). Always say 头 full-tone when it carries its own meaning; let it go toneless only when it is a suffix attached to a meaning-bearing root.

Components

radical

大 dà

big; person with outstretched arms

Bottom 大 is the indexing radical of this simplified form. Originally 頭 was 豆+頁 (vessel-on-leaf phonetic plus head); the 1956 reform collapsed the body to 大 and the dictionary now files 头 under 大 rather than the older 頁 head radical.

ideograph

⺀ diǎn

two-dot marker; pair of small ticks

Twin top dots are abstract markers indicating prominence or top-of-something. They are the simplified residue of the much fuller traditional 頭 top (豆), now compressed to two stylised ticks that sit above the head-shape below.