The word 猎物 is formed by combining two characters: 猎, which means "to hunt" and depicts the action of pursuing with animals (originally derived from a pictograph involving a hunting dog), and 物, which means "creature" or "thing". When placed together, they create a direct conceptual image, the character for the action of hunting modifies the character for a living creature, visually and semantically pointing to "the creature that is hunted", thus forming the single concept of "prey".