The Chinese word 枪械 (qiāngxiè), meaning "firearm" or "gun", is a compound noun formed through semantic combination, where two independent characters with related meanings are joined to create a more specific term. The first character, 枪 (qiāng), originally meant "spear" or "javelin" but evolved to denote projectile-firing weapons. The second character, 械 (xiè), broadly means "tool", "instrument", or "mechanical device", often implying a complex mechanism. Together, 枪械 semantically narrows to specify a category of mechanical tools or instruments that are guns, effectively distinguishing modern firearms from simpler, ancient projectile weapons like bows (弓) or the original spears, by emphasizing their mechanical nature.