The word "茉莉" for jasmine is formed by combining two characters, each constructed as a phono-semantic compound. The character "茉" uses the radical "艹" to indicate its plant category and incorporates "末" primarily for its phonetic value, while "莉" similarly uses "艹" for semantics and "利" for phonetics; together, they create a disyllabic term that approximates the sound of the word's foreign origin while semantically marking it as a plant.