The word 发生 is formed through the logical combination of two constituent characters, each contributing its core conceptual meaning to create a new, unified idea. The first character, 发 (fā), carries the fundamental notion of "to send out", "to emit", or "to initiate", pictorially rooted in the image of launching an arrow. The second, 生 (shēng), means "to grow", "to be born", or "to come into existence", originally depicting a sprout emerging from the earth. When fused, the compound visually and conceptually depicts the process of an event initiating its emergence into existence, that is, for something to "happen" or "occur". The formation is thus a semantic synthesis where one element provides the sense of commencement and the other provides the sense of manifestation.