The Chinese word 水蛭 (shuǐzhì), meaning "leech," is a semantically transparent compound formed through a straightforward morphological process: the character 水 (shuǐ) means "water," indicating the creature's typical habitat, and 蛭 (zhì) is a bound morpheme specifically denoting "blood-sucking worm" or "leech." When combined, the term functions as a modifier-head structure, where 水 acts as an attributive modifier describing the type of 蛭, effectively creating a precise zoological term for an aquatic annelid known for hematophagy. This formation is typical in Chinese for naming animals by a key characteristic (here, habitat) plus a generic category.