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.
Where this fits
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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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Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 55.