The Chinese word **剥削 (bōxuē)**, meaning "to exploit," is a compound formed through the semantic combination of two characters with closely related meanings: **剥 (bō)**, which originally meant "to peel" or "to strip" (as in bark from a tree), and **削 (xuē)**, which meant "to pare," "to scrape," or "to whittle down." Together, they create a vivid metaphor of systematically stripping away layers or shaving off portions, which was extended from the physical act to the socio-economic context of one class unilaterally extracting labor and value from another, thereby vividly conceptualizing the process of exploitation as a gradual, forceful taking away.