The word 蜕皮 is formed by combining the character 蜕, which means to slough off and is itself composed of the radical 虫 (indicating insect or creature) and the component 兑 primarily for phonetic guidance, with the character 皮, meaning skin. This results in a verb-object compound where 蜕 denotes the action of shedding and 皮 specifies what is shed, directly conveying the meaning "to shed skin".