The Chinese word 冰川 (bīngchuān), meaning "glacier," is a straightforward compound formed by combining two independent characters: 冰 (bīng), which means "ice," and 川 (chuān), which originally means "river" or "flowing water." The term is formed semantically, where the meaning of the first character describes the substance ("ice") and the second character describes its form or behavior ("river-like flow"), creating a new, logical concept for a river of ice that moves slowly over land. This method of combining meaningful, single-character morphemes to form precise, descriptive compound words is a fundamental and highly productive process in modern Chinese vocabulary building.