The term 嬉皮士 (xīpíshì) is a loanword formed through a hybrid process of phonetic borrowing and semantic association to translate the English word "hippie". The first two characters, 嬉皮 (xīpí), directly approximate the sound of "hippy", while the chosen characters carry suggestive meanings: 嬉 implies "playfulness" or "amusement", and 皮 suggests "skin" or "surface", loosely evoking the unconventional, free-spirited nature of the counterculture. The final character 士 (shì), meaning "scholar", "warrior", or "person of a certain type", acts as a nominalizing suffix commonly used in translated terms (like in 爵士 for "jazz"), collectively constructing a term that sounds familiar and conveys the essence of a "playful, nonconformist person".