The word 扣押 is a compound verb formed through the combination of two characters with related meanings: 扣 (kòu), which carries the sense of "to detain", "to withhold", or "to fasten", and 押 (yā), which means "to escort", "to mortgage", or "to confine". Together, they create a single, more specific legal and administrative term where each character reinforces the other, meaning "to seize", "to confiscate", or "to impound" (e.g., property or goods by official authority). This formation follows a common pattern in Chinese where synonymous or semantically linked morphemes are paired to produce a precise, often formal, disyllabic word whose meaning is the collective force of its parts.