The word 拐杖 (guǎizhàng), meaning "walking cane" or "crutch", is a compound noun formed through semantic combination, where two characters with related meanings are joined to create a more specific term. The first character, 拐 (guǎi), originally means "to turn" but by extension signifies something to lean on or hook onto (a cane). The second character, 杖 (zhàng), means "staff" or "stick". Together, they redundantly yet emphatically specify the object as a staff for support, with 拐 implying its functional purpose and 杖 denoting its physical form as a stick, resulting in a clear and concrete noun.