The word 肤色 is formed by directly combining two meaningful characters: 肤 (fū), which means "skin", and 色 (sè), which means "color". The concept is constructed in a perfectly literal and descriptive way, where the first character specifies the object (skin) and the second character specifies its attribute (color). It is a straightforward, compound idea where the meaning of the whole is a direct and transparent sum of its parts, the color of the skin.