The word 夫妇 is formed by combining two characters, each representing one half of a traditional marital union: 夫 (fū), meaning "husband", and 妇 (fù), meaning "wife". Their conjunction does not create a new meaning through metaphor or abstraction, but rather through direct, complementary pairing. Placed side-by-side, they conceptually unite to represent the fundamental social unit of a married couple, symbolizing the whole through the sum of its two essential parts. This formation reflects a classical Chinese pattern of constructing terms for relationships by simply joining the words for the constituent roles.