This is one of those roots where one physical act spreads into surprising places. The core gesture is to press something down into a surface. Press a die into metal and you mint a coin. Press a seal into wax and you leave an impression. Let the gesture run away from you and the thing sinks, drowns, goes under. And the deepest stamp of all is the one that came pre-printed into the world: teva, nature, the order of things that was stamped in from the start. From sinking to minting to the very character of reality, ט־ב־ע holds them with one idea. Every word here is verified against pealim, niqqud included.
The same root runs through the verb system. Each binyan is a voice: it bends the one idea into active, passive, causative or reciprocal. Tap to hear.
Only the plain pa'al is lexicalized as a verb, yet it already carries both poles of the root: the passive sinking (to drown) and the active stamping (to mint). The same form does both because both are the one gesture of pressing into a surface. The other binyanim are not used for this root.
Same root letters, different noun moulds (mishkalim). The mould tells you the function: who does it, the act of doing it, or the thing produced.
Strip the prefixes, suffixes and vowels. Three consonants remain, and the meaning lives there.