The kanji 庶 primarily conveys the meanings of "common," "ordinary," "populace," or "all people." It often refers to the general public, the masses, or the majority of people, as opposed to the elite or ruling class. It can also imply "many" or "various."

・On-yomi (音読み): ショ (sho) ・Kun-yomi (訓読み): None, or rarely used in isolation.

⚫︎ 庶民 Translation: common people; the masses; the general public. ⚫︎ 庶務 Translation: general affairs; general business. ⚫︎ 庶子 Translation: a child born to a concubine (historically, this was not the primary wife or official spouse).

The kanji 庶 is a 形声文字 (keisei moji), or phono-semantic compound. The phonetic component is the radical 小 (shou), meaning "small." The semantic component is 止 (shi), meaning "stop, halt." The combination of these suggests a meaning related to "many small things" or "a multitude," eventually evolving to represent the "common people." The character historically depicts a hand holding a grain of rice, symbolizing the common people who subsist on basic agricultural products. The idea is that these people are numerous, "small" in number, and thus ordinary. The character's form has evolved over time, but its core meaning related to the general populace has remained.