The Chinese word 三角洲 (sānjiǎozhōu), meaning "delta" (as in a river delta), is a semantically transparent compound formed by combining the three characters 三 (sān, "three"), 角 (jiǎo, "angle" or "corner"), and 洲 (zhōu, "river island" or "continent"). It is a direct descriptive term that literally means "three-angle river island," which visually and conceptually captures the triangular shape of land formed at the mouth of a river where it splits into several distributaries before entering a larger body of water, thus illustrating the common Chinese method of constructing words through logical, image-based components.