The word 蠢事 is formed by directly combining two meaningful characters: 蠢, which pictorially represents "a worm squirming under the spring sun" and by extension means "foolish" or "stupid", with 事, a character depicting a hand holding a record of an official duty, meaning "matter" or "affair". Their union is conceptually straightforward, the first character provides the defining quality (foolish), and the second provides the category (matter), resulting in the complete idea of "a foolish matter" or "a stupid deed".