The word 荷尔蒙 is a direct phonetic borrowing from the English word "hormone", where each character was chosen solely for its sound to mimic the syllables of the original term: 荷 (hé) approximates "hor", 尔 (ěr) approximates "mone", and 蒙 (méng) completes the sound. The characters themselves carry their original meanings (such as "lotus", "you", and "cover"/"ignorance") which are entirely unrelated to the concept of a biochemical regulator, resulting in a word where the form is purely a sound-based shell for the imported scientific concept.