The Chinese word 贩子 is a noun formed through a common morphological process in Mandarin, combining the meaningful root 贩 (fàn), which means "to deal in", "to buy to resell", or "to traffic", with the nominalizing suffix 子 (zi). The root 贩 conveys the core concept of petty trade or commerce, often with a slight informal or pejorative nuance. The suffix 子, in this context, attaches to verbs or other roots to create a noun that denotes a person characterized by that action, similar to the "-er" suffix in English (e.g., "seller", "dealer"). Thus, 贩子 literally means "one who deals in [something]", and it typically refers to a small-scale trader, vendor, or peddler, often used in compounds like 菜贩子 (vegetable seller) or 人贩子 (human trafficker), where it carries a connotation of being a middleman, sometimes viewed as unscrupulous or insignificant.