The word "荒谬" is formed by combining the character "荒", meaning barren or desolate, which uses the grass radical (艹) to suggest overgrown wilderness, with "谬", meaning false or erroneous, which incorporates the speech radical (讠) to imply verbal falsehood; together they create a compound where desolation amplifies the sense of unreality in falsehood, resulting in the meaning "absurd" or "preposterous".