The word 受苦 is formed through the direct and intuitive combination of two meaningful characters: 受, which means "to receive" or "to undergo", and 苦, which means "hardship" or "suffering". Placed together, they create a compound where the first character denotes the action and the second character specifies the object of that action, visually and conceptually conveying the idea of "receiving hardship", or more naturally, "to suffer" or "to endure hardship". This formation is a clear example of how Chinese frequently builds concepts by logically merging elemental pictographic or ideographic components.