Translation
balcony
Word origin
From Italian balcone, a large window or scaffold, built on a Germanic word for a beam - the same balk that English uses for a squared timber. The thing was named after what held it up.
- Origin
- Italian
- Root
- balcone
- English cognates
- balcony, balk
Examples
.
She stood on the balcony and looked at the street.
.
Our flat has a small balcony.
.
Red flowers grow on the balcony.
is the balcony on a building, and also the balcony in a theatre, the
tier above the stalls.
A false seam. -On- is a real Esperanto suffix and a useful one: it makes
fractions. a half, o a third, o a quarter, o a
hundredth. So offers the eye a root balk- and a fraction ending,
and it is nonsense - a balcony is not one balk-th of anything. The word came
whole from Italian balcone, and the -on- inside it is Italian, not
Esperanto.
The etymology is worth a second, because the false seam is almost true in the
wrong language. Italian balcone really was built on a Germanic word for a
beam, the same balk English still uses for a squared timber. So there IS a
root in there and it does mean something - just not in Esperanto, and not the
suffix your affix drill has been training you to see.
Ordinary derivations behave: balkona , a balcony door; o, a
tiny one - the sort a Parisian window opens onto and nobody can stand on.
Where this fits
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balkono: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "balkono" (balcony): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.
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Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 45.