The word 陨石 is formed by directly combining two conceptual images: 陨 (yǔn), meaning "to fall from the sky" or "to perish", which here vividly captures the action of an object plummeting from the heavens, with 石 (shí), meaning "stone". Together, they create a direct and literal pictorial description, a "sky-falling stone", which perfectly encapsulates the phenomenon of a rock that originates in space and crashes to Earth, forming the compound term for "meteorite".