Translation
cell (of a body); prison cell; cell of a honeycomb
Word origin
From Latin cella, a small room or store chamber. The biological sense is a seventeenth-century coinage: Robert Hooke looked at cork through a microscope, saw rows of little chambers and named them after the cells monks lived in.
- Origin
- Latin
- Root
- cella
- English cognates
- cell, cellar, cellular
Examples
.
The cells of the body are very small.
.
They locked him in a small cell.
.
There is honey in every cell of the bees' comb.
carries the same spread of senses PIV gives it and English keeps too: the unit of living tissue, the small room in a prison or a monastery, and the six-sided compartment in a honeycomb. Technical writing extends it to a battery cell and to a cell in a table. They are all the same idea, a small enclosed compartment in a larger structure, and one word covers the lot.
Now the pair that costs marks. is a cell. Kelo is a cellar. One hat, two different words, and they are not related in Esperanto even though the Latin behind them is close family. Say and you have put yourself in prison; say and you have put the wine where it belongs.
The hat is not decoration. Ĉ is the sound of English "church", k is a hard k, so and do not even rhyme when spoken - the confusion is purely a reading-and-typing one, and it goes away the moment you say the words aloud. This is the single best argument for pronouncing everything you read in the early chapters.
Derivations: ĉela cellular, o a tissue or a mass of cells, unuĉela single-celled.
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ĉelo: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "ĉelo" (cell (of a body); prison cell; cell of a honeycomb): 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 39.