The word 民众 is formed by combining two characters, each contributing a core idea to create a new, unified concept. The first character, 民 (mín), broadly means "the people" or "folk", referring to a general populace. The second, 众 (zhòng), means "many" or "a crowd", emphasizing multitude and collectivity. When joined, they semantically reinforce each other, merging the notion of "the people" with the sense of "the multitude" to form the compound meaning of "the masses" or "the general public", conceptually highlighting a collective body of ordinary people.