The word 怪物 is formed by combining two meaningful characters: 怪, which carries the sense of "strange", "odd", or "supernatural", and 物, which means "thing" or "creature". Their conceptual fusion creates a new, unified idea where the quality of strangeness directly modifies the category of creature, resulting in the composite meaning of a "strange creature" or "monster". This is a classic example of a Chinese compound where the first element describes the essential characteristic of the second, building the complete concept through this direct semantic relationship.