arbusto

A false seam with a true story behind it. Arbusto looks like arbo plus something. It is not: there is no -ust- suffix in Esperanto, and arbusto is one root, arbust-, borrowed whole. But unlike most false seams, this one is not a coincidence either. Latin arbustum really is built on arbor, a tree - it meant a plantation, a place set with trees - and Esperanto arbo comes from the same arbor. The pieces are related in Latin; they are simply not decomposable in Esperanto.

That is a specific and useful category, and this course has met it before with inspiri: a word whose parts genuinely mean something in the source language and mean nothing in this one. You may enjoy the connection. You may not use it to invent arb-ust-o on the fly, because there is no such suffix and the word would be nonsense to a listener.

Where the botany draws the line. ReVo is precise about it. An arbusto is woody and long-lived, like a tree, but it branches from the base rather than carrying a single trunk up before spreading. So:

• Arbo - woody, one trunk, branches high.
• Arbusto - woody, several stems, branches at the ground. Bramble, heather, honeysuckle, barberry.
• Staŭdo - not woody at all. A herbaceous perennial.

Arbedo is a smaller shrub or bushlet, and arbetaĵo and arbustaro both do thicket, a mass of the things. English bush and shrub cover this ground untidily; the Esperanto word is the botanist's one and holds its edges.

Figurative use exists. ReVo cites a spider's web described as a thicket of silken threads, and arbusto de kabloj for a tangle behind a desk would be understood at once. The picture is always the same: many stems from one place, going in all directions.