The word "寥寥无几" is formed by the reduplication of the character "寥", meaning "few" or "sparse", to create "寥寥", which emphasizes scarcity, and then combining it with the phrase "无几", where "无" means "not" and "几" means "several", together meaning "not many". This structure layers intensification through lexical repetition and negation to convey the concept of extreme fewness.