Translation
onion
Word origin
From Latin cepa, an onion, which is also the source of Italian cipolla, Spanish cebolla and French ciboule. English took the same root by a side door: a chive is a cepa too, through Old French cive.
- Origin
- Latin
- Root
- cepa
- English cognates
- chive, cipollino
Examples
.
She cut the onion and started crying at once.
, .
There is onion, potato and salt in the soup.
.
The onions grow in the garden beside the house.
The first letter is the one to watch. starts with c, which in
Esperanto is ts, so it is pronounced TSEH- and not SEH- or KEH-.
Learners coming from English or Spanish get this wrong more often than any other
consonant in the language, and is a good word to practise on because you
will use it.
Why it makes you cry, in one sentence. Cutting an onion breaks cells that then release a small sulphur compound into the air; it reaches the eye, the eye makes tears to wash it out, and you look upset about a vegetable. The cliche is earned. Esperanto has the same joke and larmo at rank 506 is the word for the tear itself.
A kitchen staple, and treated as one. sits with
legomo, terpomo and
supo in the everyday-food vocabulary, and the
derivations are the obvious ones: o an onion field, cepa onion
soup. Garlic, its close relative, is ajlo two hundred
ranks later, a separate root for what is botanically the same genus: the onion
is Allium cepa and garlic is Allium sativum.
Where this fits
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cepo: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "cepo" (onion): 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 54.