Translation
employee
Word origin
Built inside Esperanto from dungi ('to hire') and the passive past participle -it-, so literally one who has been hired. Dungi itself is a Germanic borrowing, from the same family as German dingen, to engage somebody for work.
- Origin
- Esperanto derivation
- Root
- dungi + -it-
Examples
.
The company has a hundred employees.
.
Every employee receives their wage every month.
.
The employee complained about their job.
This is a participial nominal and a textbook one. Take dungi, to hire; make it passive and past with -it-; add -o to turn the participle into a person. is one who has been hired, and the hiring is finished, which is exactly the state an employee is in.
The tense matters more than English speakers expect. Dungato is one who is being hired, right now, mid-process, and it is not the word for the person at the next desk. Dungoto is one who is going to be hired, the candidate who has been offered the job. English flattens all three into employee and hire, so the choice has to be made consciously.
The other side of the desk is dunganto, the employer, built from the active participle -ant-. That pair, and dunganto, is worth memorising together: it is the cleanest demonstration in the language that swapping one letter swaps who is doing what to whom. The employment relationship itself is o, and the act of taking somebody on is dungo.
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dungito: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "dungito" (employee): 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 38.