fendi

Fendi is not a general-purpose "cut". The dictionary is specific: to divide hard material along its length. You fendi logs, stone, a plank - things with a grain that the blow follows. What comes apart is a fendo, a long narrow crack, and light coming through the fendo of a door is one of the stock images of the language.

Figuratively it keeps the same shape: to drive through a mass and part it. La ŝipo fendis la ondojn - the ship split the waves with its bow. A crowd, a fog, a silence can all be fendita by something moving through.

Against its neighbours: tranĉi is to cut with a blade, across or along, bread or rope or anything; rompi is to break, with no direction implied; dividi is to divide, an arithmetical or social act more than a physical one. Fendi is the axe.

The seam that is not there. Fendi ends in the letters -end-, and Esperanto does have a real suffix -end- meaning "which must be done" (pagenda, payable; farenda, to be done). It is not in this word. The root is fend-, entire, and there is no f- left over to hang it on. The same trap sits in fadeno, a thread, whose -en- is likewise just part of a borrowed root. Test it the reliable way: strip the candidate affix and ask whether the remainder is a word. Pag- is; f- is not.