The word 叛国 (pànguó), meaning "to betray one's country" or "treason", is a compound word formed through the combination of two distinct characters: 叛 (pàn), which means "to betray, to rebel", and 国 (guó), which means "country" or "nation". It follows a common grammatical structure in Chinese known as a "verb-object" or "predicate-object" compound, where the first character (叛) acts as the action (the verb "to betray") and the second character (国) acts as the direct object of that action ("the country"). Therefore, the term is constructed logically and semantically to literally mean "betray-country", succinctly conveying the act of treachery against the state.