Translation
biscuit; cookie
Word origin
From French biscuit, which is Latin bis coctus, 'twice cooked'. Ship's biscuit was baked a second time to drive the water out so that it would keep at sea for months, and the name outlived the practice. Italian biscotti is the same two words with the same job.
- Origin
- French
- Root
- bis coctus
- English cognates
- biscuit, biscotti, concoct
Examples
.
She gave me tea and two biscuits.
.
The children ate all the biscuits before the evening.
.
I bought biscuits in the little shop.
A word with a translation problem that is not Esperanto's fault. In British English a biscuit is the hard sweet thing you dunk in tea; in American English that thing is a cookie, and a biscuit is a soft savoury scone served with gravy. is the British one. If you are writing for an American reader, cookie is the word you want.
The etymology settles which sense is basic. Bis coctus is twice-cooked, and the point of the second baking was dryness: a biscuit keeps because there is no water left in it. So the core of is crispness. A soft American-style cookie is not really a at all, and Esperantists usually call it a , a little kuko, which is exactly right.
Nothing here decomposes. Bisk- is not a root and -- is not a suffix; the whole of - came in from French as one piece, hardened Latin and all. Zamenhof had it in the Russian-Esperanto dictionary of 1889, so it is not a modern import.
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biskvito: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "biskvito" (biscuit; cookie): 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 40.