The word 罪人 (zuìrén), meaning "sinner" or "criminal", is a compound noun formed through a straightforward semantic combination of its two constituent characters: 罪 (zuì), which means "crime", "sin", or "guilt", and 人 (rén), which means "person". It follows the common Chinese word-formation structure of a "modifier-head" relationship, where the first character 罪 modifies and specifies the type of person denoted by the second character 人, effectively creating the meaning "a person of crime/guilt". This construction is analogous to English compounds like "gunman" or "firefighter", where the defining attribute precedes the core noun.