The word "鹦鹉" (yīngwǔ), meaning "parrot", is a disyllabic phonetic compound word formed through rebus association, where each character was chosen primarily for its sound to approximate the foreign name of the bird, with the radical 鸟 (niǎo), meaning "bird", added to both characters to semantically categorize them. Specifically, "鹦" borrows the sound of "鸚" (yīng) and "鹉" borrows the sound of "武" (wǔ), likely from an ancient southern or foreign term for the parrot, with the bird radical appended to each to visually indicate that both syllables together refer to a type of avian creature.