The word 女生 is formed by directly combining two meaningful characters: 女 (nǚ), which means "female" or "woman", and 生 (shēng), which in this context means "student" or "one who is born/living". It is a straightforward conceptual fusion where the first character specifies the category (female) and the second character specifies the role or identity (student), creating the compound meaning of "female student" or, more broadly, "girl".