The Chinese word **公务员 (gōngwùyuán)**, meaning "civil servant" or "public official," is a compound term formed by combining three meaningful characters: **公 (gōng)** meaning "public" or "state," **务 (wù)** meaning "affair" or "duty," and **员 (yuán)** meaning "person" or "member." It is constructed logically through modification, where **公务 ("public affairs/duties")** acts as a descriptive compound modifying **员 ("person")**, thus creating the specific meaning of "a person engaged in public duties." This transparent morphological structure is typical in Modern Standard Chinese, where terms for modern professions and roles are often systematically created by combining existing semantic units to convey precise, compound meanings.