Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of bubo
Coloured illustration of bubo
#2026 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

brat, urchin; cheeky lad

Word origin

From German Bube, a boy and, in the older sense, a knave. The same Germanic family gave English boy the card-playing sense of knave, and Bube is still the jack in a German deck.

Origin
German
Root
Bube
English cognates
knave

Examples

.

The urchins ran through the street shouting.

, .

He is a good lad, but he never listens.

.

Do not be a brat in front of the guests.

is a boy with an attitude. It covers the ragged child running loose in the street, the cheeky one who answers back, and, said warmly by a grandmother, something close to you little monkey. Like most affectionate insults, the tone is carried entirely by the face of the person saying it.

Keep it apart from fripono, which owns the rogue end of this territory: a is a rascal or a crook, an adult with a scheme, and there is money involved. A is younger, poorer and more annoying, and steals apples rather than pensions.

The affixes do the register for you. o is the one you genuinely dislike, o the small one you have forgiven already, and buba describes the behaviour: buba rido, a cheeky laugh. o exists for a girl, though is often used of any child of that sort, and plain knabo stays the neutral word for a boy.

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Esperanto · Free printables

bubo: worksheet, infographic and listicle

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This word is part of lesson 41.