shū
verb #39,722

Meanings

  1. 1 (literary) to relieve; to ease (a difficulty)
  2. 2 (literary) to slacken; to delay

Examples

Zhèngfǔ chūtái zhèngcè, yǐ shū jiě xiǎo qǐyè de kùnnán.
The government rolled out policies to relieve the difficulties of small businesses.

Tips

history
is literary and rarely used alone. It survives chiefly in the formal compound 纾困 ('to relieve hardship', common in economic news) and the classical ('to relieve the nation's peril').
register
Formal and literary — policy, financial, and classical writing; everyday speech uses 缓解 ('to ease') instead.

Components

radical
silk; thread
is the silk radical in left-side form. A loosened thread pictures slackening — easing tension or hardship.
phonetic
to give; I
gives the sound (drifted to shū). The same phonetic appears in (relaxed / to stretch) and (beforehand).

Stroke Order

shū