The Chinese word 欠债 (qiànzhài) is a verb-object compound formed by combining two meaningful characters: 欠 (qiàn), which means "to owe" or "to be deficient," and 债 (zhài), which specifically means "debt" or "monetary obligation." Together, they create a logical grammatical structure where the first character 欠 acts as the verb ("to owe") and the second character 债 acts as the direct object ("debt"), resulting in the literal and combined meaning "to owe a debt." This formation exemplifies a common pattern in Chinese where two independent morphemes are combined to produce a new, transparent concept whose meaning is directly derived from the sum of its parts.