The Chinese word 赎罪 (shú zuì), meaning "to atone for sin" or "redemption", is a verb-object compound formed by combining the character 赎 (shú), which means "to redeem", "to ransom", or "to atone for", with the character 罪 (zuì), which means "sin", "guilt", or "crime". Syntactically, the first character acts upon the object denoted by the second, creating the direct meaning "to redeem sin". This formation reflects a profound cultural and often religious concept where a wrongdoing or transgression is metaphorically cleansed or paid for through compensatory action, capturing the idea of moral or spiritual restitution in a single, efficient lexical unit.