elvoki

After a page of false seams, here is a real one. Elvoki genuinely is el plus voki: to call out of, to call forth. Nothing is hidden, and the parts mean what they say.

What makes it satisfying is that Latin ran the same sum. Evocare is ex- plus vocare, out plus call, and it gave English evoke. So an Esperanto speaker who has never met the English word can build it from two roots learned in the first hundred, and an English speaker who has never met the Esperanto word can read it on sight. That is the prefix system doing precisely what it was designed to do, and it is worth pausing on, because most of the words in this chapter do not work that way.

In use it takes a direct object and the object is usually abstract: a memory, an image, a feeling, an association. La muziko elvokis memorojn is the standard shape. The spirits-and-candles sense is real but literary, and for that you will also see alvoki. Watch the prefix, because Esperanto lets you change it and mean something else entirely: alvoki is to call to, revoki is to call back or revoke, kunvoki is to convene, forvoki is to call away. Same root, four different meetings.