The word 错乱 is formed through the direct and logical combination of its two constituent characters: 错, meaning "wrong", "mistaken", or "interlocked", and 乱, meaning "disorder" or "chaos". They merge not by grammar, but by a conceptual fusion where the state of being "wrong" or "out of place" (错) inherently produces or defines a state of "disorder" (乱), resulting in a compounded meaning that describes a condition of severe confusion, derangement, or systematic incoherence where things are both incorrect and chaotically jumbled.