The Chinese word 伎俩 (jì liǎng), meaning "trick" or "scheme", is a disyllabic compound formed through the combination of two semantically related characters. Etymologically, both 伎 and 俩 originally carried meanings related to skill or ability; 伎 referred to talent or craft (often in performance), while 俩 (a variant form associated with 倆) implied a pair or a set of skills. Over time, through a process of semantic pejoration common in language evolution, their conjunction narrowed in meaning, shifting from a neutral sense of "techniques" or "methods" to specifically denote deceitful or underhanded tactics, thus forming a single lexical unit where the combined meaning is greater than the sum of its parts.