shù
numerous
Original meaning:
to cook; boil
Depicts a stone pot (石) over a fire (灬). Based on the original meaning "to cook; boil", now written as 煮. The current meaning is a phonetic loan.
Components
Evolution

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Bronze script
Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Most common words with 庶
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
numerous | ||
plebeian | ||
populous and affluent | ||
bastard | ||
similar |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*s-tak-s | syoH | shù | numerous; commoner |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
3016th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 11 |
Unicode | U+5EB6 |
Shuowen | “庶,屋下眾也。从广、炗。炗,古文光字。” |
Sources
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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