The word 学期 is formed by combining two meaningful characters: 学 (xué), which means "to study" or "learning", and 期 (qī), which means "a period of time" or "a scheduled term". Together, they conceptually blend to create the compound idea of a "study period", specifically referring to an academic semester or school term. This is a direct and logical semantic construction where the first character specifies the activity and the second character defines its temporal framework.