The word "海枯石烂" is constructed from four characters where 海 and 石 are nouns meaning "sea" and "stone", respectively, and 枯 and 烂 are verbs meaning "dry up" and "decay", respectively. These are arranged in two verb-object pairs: 海枯 (sea dries up) and 石烂 (stone decays), which are then combined to form a compound idiom.