ĉirkaŭpreni

Decode it. Ĉirkaŭ-preni. Ĉirkaŭ is around, preni is to take, and taking somebody around is a hug. Nothing here is idiomatic and nothing has to be memorised: if you know both halves you already knew the word, and that is the point of the preposition-plus-verb pattern that runs through the whole language.

But which one do people actually say? Mostly brakumi, rank 1759, more often than ĉirkaŭpreni, rank 2469. Our own frequency list puts brakumi seven hundred places ahead, and that matches the feel of spoken Esperanto. Brakumi is brak-um-i, arm plus the deliberately vague -um- suffix, which here lands on "do the arm thing", and Esperanto speakers reach for it the way English speakers reach for hug.

Ĉirkaŭpreni is the more literal and slightly more formal one. It is what translated literature tends to use, it survives well in narrative prose, and it carries a shade of taking hold rather than merely embracing. Both are correct, both are everywhere, and no one will blink at either. If you want a rule of thumb: say brakumi to a friend, write ĉirkaŭpreni in a novel.

And there is a third. Ĉirkaŭbraki arrives at rank 2,930, built from ĉirkaŭ plus brako rather than preni. It puts the emphasis on the arms going round, which is why it is the one that works for a tree trunk or a barrel as well as a person. Three builds, one gesture: brakumi is the default, ĉirkaŭpreni the warm and literary one, and ĉirkaŭbraki the physical one.