The Chinese word "半决赛" is formed by combining three characters: 半 (bàn), meaning "half" or "semi-"; 决 (jué), meaning "decide" or "determine"; and 赛 (sài), meaning "competition" or "match". The characters are concatenated to create a compound where 半 modifies 决赛 (final match), literally conveying "half-decide-competition" to denote the semi-finals, a stage in a tournament that determines which participants advance to the final match.