The Chinese compound word "卖淫" (màiyín) is formed through a standard grammatical structure where the first character, "卖" (mài, meaning "to sell"), acts as a verb modifying the second character, "淫" (yín, which in this context means "licentiousness" or "lewdness"). Literally, it constructs the concept of "selling lewdness", where "卖" denotes the commercial transaction and "淫" specifies the nature of the act being traded. This combination creates a specific term for prostitution, semantically indicating the exchange of sexual services for money, following the common Chinese word-formation pattern of a verb-object relationship within a single lexical unit.