Wildebeest comes from Dutch wilde (wild) + beest (beast), literally wild beast; adopted into modern English as wildebeest, a large African antelope also called the gnu. In current use it is a noun meaning "a large African antelope with a head like an ox and a long tufted tail". That sense is explained by the older material without requiring a speculative semantic step: the inherited or borrowed base supplies the field of meaning, while the English formation fixes its modern role. The surface form is compositional: its joined elements remain visible in the modern word. The word's history is thus visible in its construction: the components remain interpretable even after the whole expression has settled into a conventional English meaning.