The Chinese word 首府 (shǒufǔ), meaning "capital city" or "administrative center," is a compound word formed by combining two meaningful characters: 首 (shǒu), which originally means "head" and by extension "chief" or "primary," and 府 (fǔ), which historically refers to a "seat of government," "administrative mansion," or "official residence." Together, they create a semantic compound where 首 modifies 府 to specify the "primary" or "chief" administrative seat, typically used for the capital of a province, autonomous region, or other sub-national division, distinguishing it from the national capital (首都, shǒudū). This formation follows a common Chinese word-construction pattern where two nouns are combined, with the first acting as an attributive to the second, resulting in a new, precise term.