The word 麦片 is formed by directly combining two characters: 麦 (mài), meaning "wheat" (or broadly, grain like oats), and 片 (piàn), meaning "a flat piece" or "slice". It conceptually describes the final food product, flakes or rolled pieces made from grain. The term doesn't depict an action or a grammatical structure but simply names the substance by its source material (wheat/oats) and its physical form (thin, flat pieces).