The Chinese word 劣质 (lièzhì), meaning "inferior quality" or "poor quality," is a compound word formed through semantic combination. It consists of two characters: 劣 (liè), which means "inferior," "bad," or "of low grade," and 质 (zhì), which means "quality," "substance," or "nature." When combined in the modifier-head structure typical of Chinese compounds, the first character 劣 acts as an adjective describing the second character 质, the noun, thereby directly creating the meaning "inferior quality." This formation follows a common pattern in modern Chinese where two meaningful morphemes are joined to produce a precise, often bisyllabic term.