The word 佝偻 is formed by combining two phono-semantic characters: 佝 uses the semantic component 人 (person) and the phonetic component 句 (gōu), while 偻 uses the semantic component 人 (person) and the phonetic component 娄 (lóu); together, they create a term meaning "hunchbacked", with the semantics relating to a person and the phonetics approximating the pronunciation "gōulóu".