The Chinese word 屠夫 (túfū), meaning "butcher", is a compound noun formed through semantic combination. The first character, 屠 (tú), means "to slaughter" or "to butcher", indicating the action. The second character, 夫 (fū), is a common suffix denoting a person, often a man, engaged in a specific trade or activity. Therefore, the word is constructed by directly combining the concept of the action (屠) with the agent who performs it (夫), creating the straightforward occupational term "slaughter-man" or "butcher". This follows a highly productive pattern in Chinese for forming agentive nouns, similar to words like 农夫 (nóngfū, farmer) or 车夫 (chēfū, cart driver).