The word 摩托 is formed through a process of phonetic borrowing from a foreign language. It is a direct transliteration of the sound of the English word "motor", where each character is chosen not for its meaning, but purely for how its pronunciation approximates a syllable of the source word: 摩 (mó) for "mo-" and 托 (tuō) for "-tor". When combined, these two characters create a disyllabic unit that replicates the original sound, resulting in a word specifically used to denote a motorized vehicle, most commonly a motorcycle.