The Chinese word **皮革 (pígé)**, meaning "leather," is a **compound word** formed by combining two morphemes with related meanings: **皮 (pí)**, which means "skin" or "hide," and **革 (gé)**, which historically means "processed hide" or "tanned leather." The character 革 originally depicted a stretched animal skin, and over time it came to specifically denote the treated, durable material. By joining these two semantically similar characters, the compound **皮革** precisely specifies the material as **finished leather** (rather than just raw hide), leveraging the compounding nature of Chinese where two elements reinforce and refine a single concept.