堆砌
duī qì · HSK 7
fig. to pad out
🧱 堆 pile + 砌 lay bricks — stack blocks or stack fancy words
Bricklayers pile one block atop another. Writers do the same with ornate phrases — heaping on flourishes until the text is overbuilt.
堆 — earth 土 + bird 隹 (phonetic)
堆 is a phono-semantic compound. The earth radical 土 gives the meaning, suggesting a mound or pile of soil, while 隹 (a short-tailed bird) supplies the sound. Originally it referred to a heap of earth, and today it broadly means a pile or to stack things up.