The word 榫卯 is a compound formed by combining two characters: 榫, which means "tenon" and is a phono-semantic character composed of the wood radical 木 (indicating material) and the phonetic component 隼, and 卯, which means "mortise" and originates from a pictographic representation of a split or cavity. Together, they lexically denote the two interlocking components of a traditional woodworking joint.