The word "公鸡" (gōngjī, meaning "rooster") is formed through a straightforward compounding process in Chinese, where two distinct characters combine to create a specific meaning. The first character, "公" (gōng), is a semantic component meaning "male" or "public," and the second character, "鸡" (jī), is the root meaning "chicken." By placing the modifier "公" before the general category "鸡," the compound directly and logically specifies "male chicken," which is the precise term for a rooster. This structure follows the common Chinese syntactic pattern of modifier (attribute) + head noun, making the word transparent and easily understandable from its parts.