The Chinese word "去芜存菁" is formed by combining two verb-object constructions: "去芜" meaning "to remove the weeds" and "存菁" meaning "to preserve the essence", where 去 signifies "to remove", 芜 denotes "weeds" or "inferior parts", 存 means "to preserve", and 菁 refers to "essence" or "the best part", resulting in a compound idiom that literally expresses the action of discarding the dross and retaining the refined.