The Chinese word 消毒 (xiāo dú), meaning "to disinfect" or "to sterilize", is a compound formed through a logical semantic combination of its two constituent characters: 消 (xiāo), which means "to eliminate, remove, or dissipate", and 毒 (dú), which means "poison, toxin, or pathogen". The formation follows a verb-object or resultative structure common in Chinese, where the first character denotes the action (消 - to remove) and the second character denotes the target of that action (毒 - poison/pathogens). Thus, the compound literally and conceptually means "to remove poison" or "to eliminate pathogens", perfectly encapsulating the process of disinfection.