The Chinese word 料理 is a compound formed by combining two characters: 料, which originally means "materials" or "ingredients", and 理, which means "to manage", "to arrange", or "to put in order". When combined, the literal sense is "to manage the ingredients" or "to arrange materials", which naturally evolved to specifically mean "to prepare food" or "to cook". Over time, its meaning expanded to also refer to the prepared food itself, i.e., "cuisine" or "dishes", a usage famously borrowed into Japanese (where ryōri means cuisine) and subsequently re-influenced Chinese pop culture. Thus, the word encapsulates the entire process from the handling of ingredients to the final prepared meal.