The word 社交 is formed by combining two meaningful characters: 社 (shè), which originally referred to an altar for earth deities and evolved to mean "society" or "community", and 交 (jiāo), meaning "to intersect", "to exchange", or "to mingle". Their combination conceptually merges the idea of a communal group with the action of interaction, creating a single term that encapsulates the entire notion of people connecting and engaging within a society, essentially, "social interaction". It is a direct semantic synthesis where both parts contribute equally to a new, unified meaning.