The word 挚爱 (zhì'ài) is formed through a common Chinese morphological process known as modifier-head compounding, where the first character 挚 (zhì), meaning "sincere", "earnest", or "deep", acts as an intensifying modifier to describe the nature of the second character 爱 (ài), which means "love". Thus, the compound semantically combines to mean "sincere/ardent love" or "deep affection", with 挚 specifying the quality of the 爱, resulting in a term that denotes a profound and genuine emotional devotion, often used both as a noun and as a verb ("to love deeply").