The word "啄食" is formed by combining the character "啄", meaning to peck, which is a phono-semantic compound consisting of the semantic radical "口" (mouth) indicating the action involves the mouth, and the phonetic component "豖" suggesting pronunciation, with the character "食", meaning to eat or food, derived from an ancient pictograph representing food. Together, they create a verb-object compound where "啄" acts as the verb for pecking and "食" as the noun object, resulting in the meaning of pecking at food.