Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of bori
Coloured illustration of bori
#2737 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

to drill, to bore

Word origin

A Germanic root: German bohren and English bore both come from it, and behind them stands an old Indo-European verb for piercing that also produced Latin forare. Esperanto takes it as a single root.

Origin
Germanic
Root
bohren
English cognates
bore, perforate

Examples

.

He drilled a hole in the wall.

.

The machine drills even the hardest stone.

.

They drilled a deep well to find water.

One root, and it needs saying because the shape invites a second reading.- is a real Esperanto prefix: it makes relations by marriage, so o is a father-in-law and o a brother-in-law. Seeing and reading a - in it is a natural mistake and a completely wrong one. There is no ri to attach the prefix to, bor- is the whole root, and the word has nothing to do with anybody's family.

Only the tool sense, never the tedium. English bore does two unrelated jobs, and Esperanto took only the first. To bore a hole is . To bore a person is , from (to be bored), and the two words share nothing at all. This is the kind of split that makes Esperanto easier to read than to translate into: the ambiguity English lives with simply never arises.

The family. o is the drill, the tool, and it is a proper -- derivation rather than the accident that argilo turned out to be. o is the borehole, o the drilling, traboru the imperative you shout when you want the thing gone right through, and borturo is a drilling rig. A bortruo is specifically a drilled truo, which is the sort of compound Esperanto builds without anybody having to sanction it first.

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Esperanto · Free printables

bori: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "bori" (to drill, to bore): 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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This word is part of lesson 55.