enspiri

Half of a perfectly symmetrical pair. En- plus spiri is to breathe in; elspiri, with el-, is to breathe out. Both are in this band, both are transparent, and between them they cover the whole motion with no new root at all. Ekspiri adds ek- for the sudden start of a breath, and spiro is one breath as a countable thing.

The prepositions here are doing exactly what they do in front of a noun. En is into, el is out of, and gluing them to a verb is the ordinary Esperanto move: iri gives eniri and eliri, porti gives enporti and elporti. Nothing about breathing is special. That is the point of the system.

And the cousin that only looks like family.Inspiri, at rank 1727, means to inspire and is a single borrowed root, not in- plus spiri, because Esperanto has no prefix in-. Its own page has to explain that at some length. Enspiri and elspiri are the genuine articles the false one was pretending to be: same root, real prefixes, meanings you can compute. Latin welded in- to spirare two thousand years ago and the join has long since disappeared; Esperanto redoes the same construction in the open, and you can watch it work.

Enspiri takes a direct object when you name what is breathed (enspiri fumon) and stands alone otherwise.