Affixes VI: -ec-, -em-, -id-, bo-, pra-

-ec- lifts a quality out of the thing that has it and names it. Bela gives beleco, libera gives libereco, bona gives boneco, juna gives juneco, amiko gives amikeco. The result is a noun in -o, and eco stands alone meaning a property or characteristic.

The contrast to keep straight is with -aĵ-, which names the concrete thing instead: beleco is beauty, belaĵo is a beautiful object you could point at. Confuse the two and you compliment the vase when you meant to praise the idea.

One practical note. Plenty of adjectives already have a plain noun sitting beside them, and the plain noun usually wins. Varmo is heat and varmeco is warmth-as-a-property, which is rarely what you want; reach for -ec- when no simpler noun exists.

-em- describes a standing disposition, the sort of thing you would put in a character sketch. Labori gives laborema, hard-working; paroli gives parolema, talkative; dormi gives dormema; forgesi gives forgesema. The usual result is an adjective in -a, though -emo names the inclination itself and emo stands alone as a noun.

The trap is treating it as a present tense. Dormema kato is a cat that tends to sleep a lot; dormanta kato is a cat asleep on the chair right now. One is temperament, the other is a report.

Set it against -ad-, which stretches an action out in time and insists the action is actually happening. -em- makes no such claim: a laborema man can be sitting idle and the word still holds.

-id- names the young of a creature or the descendant of a line. Kato gives katido, hundo gives hundido, birdo gives birdido, reĝo gives reĝido. The result is a noun in -o. Ido also stands alone meaning offspring, and it is the name of a breakaway planned language, a coincidence Esperantists still enjoy.

The clean distinction is between descent and membership. A reĝido is the king's child by blood; a regnano is merely a subject of the realm. -id- runs down the family tree and nothing else.

Do not substitute -et-. Hundeto is a small dog, which might well be a fully grown terrier, whereas hundido is a puppy of whatever eventual size. Age and size are different claims.

bo- marks kinship acquired through a marriage. Patro gives bopatro, patrino gives bopatrino, frato gives bofrato, filino gives bofilino, and gepatroj gives bogepatroj for the pair of them. The root keeps its ending; the prefix simply relocates the relative into the other family.

Read it outward from the wedding, not from you. A bofilo is your daughter's husband, the son the marriage gave you. He is not your wife's son from an earlier life; that is a duonfilo, built with the half prefix instead.

Two neighbouring prefixes do adjacent jobs. ge- pairs the sexes within one relationship, and pra- walks up the generations. bo- is the sideways one: same generation, different bloodline.

pra- does two jobs with one shape. On kinship it adds a generation and stacks freely: avo gives praavo, nepo gives pranepo, and praprapatro is perfectly readable. On anything else it pushes the thing back to its earliest form: homo gives prahomo, tempo gives pratempo, arbaro gives praarbaro, lingvo gives pralingvo. The root keeps its part of speech throughout.

Do not treat it as a synonym for antikva. Antiquity is an age people wrote down and argued about; pra- reaches behind the writing, to forests nobody planted and ancestors nobody named.

Its opposite number in the kinship system is bo-, which moves sideways into a marriage. pra- only ever moves backwards, and it never moves forwards.