The Chinese word 卡哇伊 is formed by phonetically transliterating the Japanese word かわいい (kawaii), meaning "cute". The characters 卡 (kǎ), 哇 (wā), and 伊 (yī) are chosen solely for their pronunciations to mimic the sounds "ka", "wa", and "i" from the original term, resulting in a loanword where the characters' meanings are irrelevant to the word's formation.