The word 青年 (qīngnián), meaning "youth" or "young person", is formed through a conceptual and metaphorical combination of its two characters. The first character, 青 (qīng), historically denotes the color of nature, a blue-green shade associated with the vibrant, fresh growth of plants and springtime, thus symbolizing vitality, newness, and immaturity. The second character, 年 (nián), means "year" and represents a unit of time or age. Therefore, the term is not a literal description but an evocative compound, painting the idea of the "green years" or the fresh, burgeoning period of one's life, directly linking the imagery of natural, youthful vigor to a specific phase in the human lifespan.