The Chinese word 愚弄 (yúnòng), meaning "to deceive" or "to make a fool of", is a compound verb formed through the combination of two meaningful characters: 愚 (yú), which means "foolish" or "to fool", and 弄 (nòng), which means "to play with", "to fiddle with", or "to manipulate". Together, they create a synergistic meaning where 弄 acts as the action verb and 愚 serves as both the manner and the object of that action; thus, the compound literally conveys the idea of "manipulating someone into foolishness" or "playing someone for a fool". This formation follows a common Chinese morphological pattern where two characters with related semantic meanings are combined to produce a more specific and often figurative or abstract meaning than either character alone.