The Chinese word **鸦片 (yāpiàn)** for "opium" is a semantic-phonetic compound formed through a process of phonetic borrowing and semantic association. The first character **鸦 (yā)**, meaning "crow," was chosen primarily for its sound to approximate the foreign syllable "a" (as in the English "opium," derived via Arabic from Greek *opion*), while the second character **片 (piàn)**, meaning "slice" or "flat piece," was added to visually represent the form of processed opium, which was often prepared in flat cakes or slabs. Thus, the combination creates a word that phonetically hints at the foreign term and simultaneously provides a visual cue to its physical appearance.