The word "死里逃生" is formed by combining four characters: 死 (sǐ, meaning "death"), 里 (lǐ, meaning "inside"), 逃 (táo, meaning "escape"), and 生 (shēng, meaning "life"). These characters are arranged sequentially to create a literal sense of "escaping from within death", which figuratively conveys the idea of narrowly surviving a fatal situation.