The Chinese word "睡觉" is formed by combining two characters: "睡", which means "to sleep" or "sleepiness", and "觉", which historically means "to wake up" or "awareness". Together, they create a compound that originally depicted the complete cycle of sleeping and awakening, but over time, the meaning simplified to specifically denote the act of sleeping. This formation exemplifies how Chinese often constructs words by merging characters with related or contrasting meanings to convey a unified concept, with each character contributing to the overall semantic understanding without necessarily reflecting grammatical structure.