Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of enuigi
Coloured illustration of enuigi
#1831 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

to bore someone; to make somebody weary

Word origin

Built inside Esperanto from enu- ('boredom') and the causative suffix -ig-. The root itself came in from French ennui and ennuyer, which go back to Latin in odio, 'in hatred', by way of the phrase mihi in odio est, 'it is hateful to me'.

Origin
Esperanto derivation, root from French
Root
enu- + -ig-
English cognates
ennui, annoy, odious

Examples

.

That long book bores me.

.

Do not bore the children with long speeches.

.

The film bored everyone except me.

is a textbook case of the -- suffix, and once you see the mechanism you get several hundred verbs free.

Start from the root. is what the bored person does: means I am bored, and it takes no object. Add -- and you get the causative - the verb for making somebody else feel it. therefore takes an object, and the object is the person who ends up bored: , the book bores me. The pair runs the same way everywhere in the language: / , / , / i.

Its mirror is , with -- instead. That suffix means becoming rather than causing, so is "I get bored", the change of state, where is the state itself. Line the three up and the system is obvious: (be bored), (become bored), (make bored). The full account of the two suffixes and how to stop confusing them is at igi and iĝi.

Two derived forms are worth having straight away, because they are commoner than the verb. a is the adjective for the thing that does the boring - a boring lecture is a - and enuo is boredom itself. English uses "bored" and "boring" for these and learners routinely swap them; Esperanto's endings will not let you.

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Esperanto · Free printables

enuigi: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "enuigi" (to bore someone; to make somebody weary): 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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This word is part of lesson 37.