The Chinese word "自卫" is formed by combining two individual characters: "自", which means "self" or "oneself", and "卫", which means "to defend" or "to protect". Together, they create a compound word where the meanings of the characters directly contribute to the overall sense, resulting in the concept of "self-defense". This formation follows a common pattern in Chinese where ideographic characters are joined semantically to express a more specific or abstract idea, in this case, the act of protecting oneself from harm.