Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of fekaĵo
Coloured illustration of fekaĵo
#2824 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

excrement, faeces

Word origin

From Latin faex, stem faec-, the dregs or sediment at the bottom of a vessel, which is where English faeces comes from too. Esperanto added the ordinary -aĵ- suffix, which turns a root into the concrete thing it produces.

Origin
Latin
Root
faec- + aĵ + o
English cognates
faeces, faecal

Examples

.

The doctor looked at the baby's faeces.

.

Animal excrement helps the field.

.

The dog left excrement on the pavement.

Plain biology, plainly said. Feki at rank 1,605 is the neutral verb, the one a vet or a midwife uses, and -- turns a root into the concrete thing that comes of it. So is the substance: excrement, faeces, muck. It is what a doctor writes in a chart and what a gardener spreads on a field, and it belongs on this page in exactly that register.

The suffix is worth the detour. -- makes a thing out of whatever it is stuck to: to eat gives o food, to drink gives o a drink, new gives a piece of news. Once you have it, dozens of words stop needing to be learned at all. The affixes article has the full set.

One warning about register. The dictionary gives a second, figurative sense: called of a person or a piece of work, is an insult of the obvious kind, and there it is as rude as the English equivalent. The literal sense is not. Keep the two apart the way you keep them apart in English, where a medical note and a shouted word can use the same root and land completely differently.

The neighbours. Feko is the same substance with the plain -o ending and is used interchangeably. Necesejo is the room, literally the necessary-place, which is one of the politest words any language has managed for it.

Where this fits

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Esperanto · Free printables

fekaĵo: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "fekaĵo" (excrement, faeces): 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 57.