The Chinese word 公款 (gōngkuǎn), meaning "public funds" or "government money," is a compound noun formed through the combination of two meaningful characters: 公 (gōng), which signifies "public," "collective," or "official," and 款 (kuǎn), which means "a sum of money," "funds," or "an item of expenditure." The formation follows a common modifier-head structure in Chinese, where the first character 公 modifies and specifies the type of the second character 款, precisely indicating that it is not private or personal money but funds belonging to the public sphere, an organization, or the state. This creates a clear and efficient semantic unit directly describing its referent.