The Chinese word **谷物** (gǔwù), meaning "cereal" or "grain," is a compound noun formed through semantic combination. It consists of two morphemes: **谷** (gǔ), which originally meant "valley" but by extension refers to the "cereal crops" grown there (like rice or millet), and **物** (wù), meaning "thing" or "object." When combined, **物** acts as a general categorical suffix, so **谷物** literally translates to "grain-thing" or "cereal-object," collectively specifying the category of edible seeds from grasses. This structure, where a specific morpheme is paired with the general **物**, is a common pattern in Chinese for forming abstract or collective nouns (similar to **动物** for "animal" or **植物** for "plant").