The Chinese word 分类 (fēnlèi), meaning "to classify" or "category", is a compound word formed through the combination of two meaningful characters: 分 (fēn), which means "to divide" or "to separate", and 类 (lèi), which means "category", "type", or "kind". Morphologically, it is a verb-object compound where the first character 分 acts as the verb ("to divide") and the second character 类 acts as the nominal object ("categories"); thus, the literal and logical formation is "to divide into categories", which perfectly captures the modern meaning of the act of classification.