Translation
duel
Word origin
From Latin duellum. The scholarly account is that duellum is simply the archaic spelling of bellum, war: Old Latin dw- regularly became b-, so the word originally meant war in general and had nothing to do with the number two.
- Origin
- Latin
- Root
- duellum
- English cognates
- duel, bellicose
Other proposed origins
- Medieval Latin read duellum as a fight between duo, two people, and the sense we now have grew out of that reading - whether as a genuine survival of an old association or as an educated pun that stuck is exactly what is argued about. (Medieval Latin, duo)
Examples
.
In the old novel the two men fought a duel.
, .
The duel was against the law, but it happened anyway.
.
He died in a duel over a question of honour.
A false seam, and an unusually interesting one. Every Esperanto learner
looks at and sees du, two, sitting at the front
of it. A duel does involve two people, which makes the reading feel confirmed.
The trouble is that the classical etymology says the opposite: duellum is the
old form of bellum, war, from a time when Latin still had the dw- that
later collapsed to b-. On that account the word meant war, full stop, and
the two-ness is an accident of shape.
Except that it is genuinely argued about. Medieval Latin plainly did read
duellum as a combat of duo, and the modern meaning came out of that reading
rather than out of the classical one. So the - in is not the
Esperanto root , it is not related to it, and it nevertheless shaped what
the word came to mean. That is a rarer thing than a plain false friend, and it
is the reason this page carries two etymologies rather than a confident one.
The rule for your own writing is unchanged: you cannot build on the - here,
and will not decompose.
Historical register, and use it that way. The belongs to
glavoj, pistols at dawn, seconds and a question of
honoro. Dueli is the verb, duelanto a duellist.
Modern Esperanto reaches for it mostly in metaphor - a of arguments, of
chess players, of lawyers - and for two people actually hitting each other you
want batali or interbatiĝi. promises
rules, witnesses and a grievance.
Where this fits
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duelo: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "duelo" (duel): 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 53.