The modern Chinese word 逻辑 is formed through a process of phonetic borrowing and semantic narrowing, originating as a direct transliteration of the Western term "logic" (from Greek logikḗ) into Chinese characters. The characters 逻 (luó) and 辑 (jí) were chosen almost exclusively for their combined sound, which approximates "lo-gic", rather than for their individual meanings (which relate to "patrol" and "gather/compile", respectively). Over time in modern usage, this imported phonetic shell became exclusively associated with and stabilized around the specific conceptual meaning of rational thought and deductive reasoning, effectively creating a new, fixed conceptual term in the language.