The Chinese word **生态** (shēngtài), meaning "ecology" or "ecological," is a modern compound formed by combining two meaningful characters: **生** (shēng), which means "life," "living," or "to grow," and **态** (tài), which means "state," "condition," or "form." Together, they create the conceptual meaning of "the state or condition of living organisms," effectively capturing the core idea of ecology as the study of the relationships between organisms and their environment. This term was coined in the 19th or early 20th century, likely as a direct translation or calque of the Western scientific term "ecology" (from Greek *oikos*, "house," and *-logia*, "study of"), with the characters chosen to semantically represent the concept of "the state of life" in a given habitat.