The Chinese word 威士忌 (wēishìjì) for "whisky" is formed through a process of phonetic borrowing, where three existing characters were selected solely for how closely their combined pronunciation approximates the English sound of the word "whisky". Each character, 威 (wēi), 士 (shì), and 忌 (jì), was chosen not for its meaning (which ranges from "power" to "scholar" to "jealousy"), but for its syllable sound, creating a phonetic compound that mimics the original foreign term while fitting into the standard syllabic structure of Mandarin Chinese.