The word 啤酒 (píjiǔ) for "beer" is formed through a process of phonetic and semantic borrowing. The character 啤 (pí) was created purely to approximate the sound of the first syllable of the foreign word "beer", and it carries no inherent meaning on its own. It is then combined with the existing character 酒 (jiǔ), which means "alcoholic drink", to create a compound that literally means "beer-drink", clearly identifying the category of the beverage while preserving its imported pronunciation.