The Chinese word **影院 (yǐngyuàn)**, meaning "cinema" or "movie theater," is a compound noun formed through semantic combination. It consists of two characters: **影 (yǐng)**, which means "shadow," "image," or, by extension, "film" or "movie" (derived from the concept of projected images), and **院 (yuàn)**, which means "courtyard," "compound," or "institution." Thus, the term literally and logically combines to mean "an institution or compound for movies," effectively describing a dedicated venue where motion pictures are shown. This formation follows the common Chinese morphological pattern of combining two meaningful characters to create a new, transparent compound word.