The word "饭碗" is formed through a direct and culturally intuitive metaphor. It literally combines "饭" (cooked rice/food) and "碗" (bowl), the concrete container for one's basic sustenance, to represent the abstract concept of one's "job" or "livelihood". This construction works because, in traditional agrarian society, possessing a bowl reliably filled with rice was synonymous with having the means to survive; thus, the physical object that holds one's food naturally evolved into a symbol for the source that provides it. The meaning emerges from the seamless fusion of the two tangible nouns into a single, powerful idea where one's occupation is conceptualized as the very vessel that contains one's material well-being.