The word "今日" is formed through the direct semantic combination of two individual characters: "今", which means "now" or "this", and "日", which means "day" or "sun". It is a compound created by placing the concept of the current time ("今") directly before the general concept of a day ("日"), resulting in the literal and conceptual meaning of "this current day", or simply "today". This formation follows a common pattern in Chinese where two meaningful characters are joined to express a single, more specific idea.