The Chinese word **肢解** is formed through the combination of two meaningful characters: **肢 (zhī)**, which means "limb" or "body part," and **解 (jiě)**, which in this context means "to separate," "to divide," or "to dismember." Together, they create a compound verb that literally means "to dismember" or "to cut apart the limbs," vividly describing the act of taking a body apart piece by piece. This word formation follows the common Chinese linguistic pattern where two semantically related characters are combined to produce a more specific and graphic meaning, with the first character specifying the object (limbs) and the second character specifying the action (to separate). Historically and in modern usage, it is often used both in its literal, gruesome sense and metaphorically to describe the thorough dismantling or breaking apart of an entity, such as a country, organization, or argument.