The word 官员 is formed through the conceptual combination of its two component characters: 官 (guān), which originally denotes the idea of a government post, office, or official function, and 员 (yuán), which signifies a person engaged in a certain role or a member of a group. Together, they fuse the abstract concept of official duty or authority (官) with the concrete notion of an individual person holding that position (员), evolving from separate meanings into a single, cohesive term that specifically refers to an "official" as the human occupant of a state or administrative office.