The word 如此 is formed by the direct and literal combination of two classical Chinese characters: 如 (rú), meaning "like" or "as", and 此 (cǐ), meaning "this". It is a prototypical example of a conceptual compound where the two independent meanings merge seamlessly to create the holistic meaning "like this" or "in this way". Its formation is not idiomatic but rather a straightforward semantic pairing where the sense of the whole is precisely the sum of its parts, originating in classical literary Chinese and fossilizing into a fixed modern term.