Translation
petrol, gasoline
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Word origin
From benzene, the hydrocarbon named after gum benzoin, whose own name reached Europe through Arabic lubān jāwī, incense of Java. The -ino here is the chemists' international ending for a class of compounds, not the Esperanto feminine suffix.
- Origin
- international chemical vocabulary, ultimately Arabic
- Root
- benzeno
- English cognates
- benzene, benzoin
Examples
.
The car needs petrol.
.
We stopped to buy petrol.
.
The price of petrol is too high.
is the fuel you put in a car. It is also the friendliest false seam
in this whole chapter, so it is worth stopping on.
Every learner has just spent a month drilling -in-, the feminine suffix:
father, mother; man, woman; cockerel,
hen. Then turns up, and the machinery says: a female
benzo. It is not. There is no root benz- in the way there is a root
-. arrived whole from international chemistry, where -
labels a class of compounds and has nothing to do with anybody's gender.
That is the gift here. The affix system is so regular that a learner can and
does read affixes into borrowed words that never had them, and the rule
is simply this: a suffix only means something when the piece in front of it is
a real root you can also meet on its own. There is no benzo, so there is no
-in-.
One more trap, from the other side of the Atlantic. never means petrol -
that is gaso, the state of matter, and asking for it
at a filling station gets you nothing. The
false friends article collects the rest of
this family.
Where this fits
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Esperanto · Free printables
benzino: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "benzino" (petrol, gasoline): 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 taught in chapter 24, lesson 1: benzino, subiri, ekzili and 7 more words.