The Chinese word 领土 (lǐngtǔ), meaning "territory" in the sense of sovereign land, is a compound noun formed by combining two meaningful characters: 领 (lǐng), which originally meant "neck" and by extension "to lead" or "to possess", and 土 (tǔ), meaning "soil" or "land". Together, they create a conceptual blend where 领 implies jurisdiction, control, or dominion, and 土 specifies the physical land itself. Thus, the term literally and figuratively represents "the land under one's leadership or dominion", elegantly encoding the concept of state sovereignty over a geographical area. This formation follows a common Chinese lexical pattern where two semantically related characters are combined to produce a new, more specific abstract term.