The word 教书 is formed by combining the character 教 (jiāo), which means "to teach" or "to instruct", with the character 书 (shū), which means "book" or "written work". It is a verb-object conceptual compound where the first character denotes the action and the second character denotes the specific object or domain of that action. Thus, the literal and combined meaning emerges as "to teach books", which naturally extends to the general act of teaching, especially in a formal or academic context, capturing the idea of imparting knowledge found in texts.