The Chinese word 付账 (fùzhàng), meaning "to pay a bill", is a verb-object compound formed by combining two meaningful characters: 付 (fù), which means "to pay" or "to hand over", and 账 (zhàng), which means "account" or "bill". This structure follows a common grammatical pattern in Chinese where a verb (付) is directly paired with its noun object (账) to create a precise action phrase, literally translating to "pay account", which semantically converges to the concept of settling a financial obligation.