The word **寺庙** (sìmiào) is a compound noun formed by combining two semantically related characters: **寺** (sì), which originally denoted a government office or bureau in ancient China but later came to specifically refer to Buddhist monasteries or temples, and **庙** (miào), which historically referred to ancestral shrines or temples dedicated to deities or ancestral worship. Over time, their meanings converged in the context of religious architecture, and together they form a single, more general term for "temple" or "monastery," encompassing both Buddhist institutions and other traditional Chinese places of worship, with the combination strengthening and broadening the concept beyond either character alone.