The word "腺嘌呤" is formed through a combination of semantic and phonetic elements: the character "腺" (xiàn) conveys the semantic aspect related to "gland" or "adeno-" from the root of "adenine", while the characters "嘌呤" (piàolìng) together provide a phonetic approximation of "purine", the chemical class to which adenine belongs, thus creating a transliterated term that captures both sound and partial meaning.