The word "魔咒" is formed by combining the character "魔", meaning demon or magic, which is a phono-semantic character consisting of the semantic radical "鬼" (ghost) and the phonetic component "麻", with the character "咒", meaning curse or incantation, derived from ancient pictographic representations of repeated speech or spells; together, they create a compound where "魔" modifies "咒" to denote a magical or demonic curse.