About
The Chinese word **螺旋** (luóxuán), meaning "spiral" or "helix," is a **morpheme-morpheme compound** formed by combining two meaningful characters: **螺** (luó), which originally refers to a "spiral shell" (like that of a snail or conch), and **旋** (xuán), which means "to revolve," "to rotate," or "to circle." Together, they create a semantic compound where the first character provides the concrete, form-based concept (a spiral object from nature) and the second character provides the dynamic, action-based concept (the motion of spinning or twisting). This combination perfectly captures the essence of a three-dimensional curve that coils around a central axis, illustrating a common Chinese word-formation strategy of pairing a noun with a verb or modifier to define a complex idea.