The Chinese word **殖民 (zhímín)**, meaning "to colonize," is a **verb-object compound** formed by combining the character **殖 (zhí)**, which means "to propagate," "to grow," or "to multiply," with the character **民 (mín)**, meaning "people" or "populace." Literally, the term constructs the concept of "causing people to settle and multiply" in a new territory, thereby directly and efficiently capturing the core action of establishing a settler population in a foreign land as the essence of colonization. This morphological structure is common in Chinese for creating verbs that describe an action and its direct object.