The word 巫婆 is formed by combining two characters: 巫, which originally referred to a shaman or spirit medium, a person who performed rituals and communicated with the spiritual world, and 婆, meaning an old woman or matriarch. By fusing these concepts, the term specifically denotes an elderly female practitioner of magic or witchcraft, creating the familiar figure of a "witch" or "hag", where the mystical function of the 巫 is explicitly gendered and aged by the 婆.