塔
tǎ HSK6

tower

Phonosemantic compound. 土 represents the meaning and 荅 represents the sound.

Components

土
土 Meaning component
tǔ earth
荅
荅 Sound component
dā, dá, tà small bean

Character Evolution

Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Regular Modern

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld Chinese
Zhengzhangtʰuːb
Unicodetɑp

說文解字

《說文新附》:“塔,西域浮屠也。从土,答聲。”

Sources

Character origin
漢語多功能字庫
Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Zhengzhang Shangfang
Historical images
Academia Sinica