The word 超市 (chāoshì), meaning "supermarket", is formed through a direct conceptual combination of its two component characters: 超 (chāo), which means "to exceed" or "super", and 市 (shì), which means "market". It is a modern compound that literally translates the English concept of a "super market", a large, self-service retail store that surpasses a traditional market in scale, variety, and organization. The term was created by semantically importing the foreign idea and constructing a new, intuitive Chinese word that describes it literally as a "super market".