The word 村民 is formed through a straightforward and common Chinese compounding method where two independent characters, each with their own meaning, are combined to create a new, specific term. The first character, 村 (cūn), means "village", and the second character, 民 (mín), means "people" or "inhabitants". When placed together in this modifier-noun structure, 村 descriptively modifies 民, resulting in the combined meaning of "village people" or "villagers". This formation exemplifies how Chinese efficiently creates precise vocabulary by logically combining existing semantic units.