The word 火焰 (huǒyàn), meaning "flame", is formed through a purely ideographic and semantic combination. The first character, 火, is a stylized pictogram representing fire itself. The second character, 焰, is a compound ideograph built from the "fire" radical (火) on the left, which categorizes it, and the component 臽 on the right, which historically suggested a hollow or cavity, here evoking the image of a hollow, leaping, or flickering tongue of fire. Thus, the two characters together create a layered visual concept: the general idea of fire (火) is specified and intensified by the second character (焰) to depict the specific, dynamic, and visible phenomenon of a blazing flame.