Translation
bachelor, unmarried man
Word origin
A back-formation, and an unusual one. Zamenhof borrowed German Fräulein, 'Miss', as fraŭlino, then read the ending as Esperanto's own feminine suffix -in- and stripped it off to get fraŭlo. German never had such a word: Fräulein is a diminutive of Frau, and the -lein is a German ending, not an Esperanto one.
- Origin
- German
- Root
- Fräulein, via fraŭlino
- English cognates
- Frau
Examples
.
He stayed a bachelor for many years.
.
The young bachelor lived alone in a big house.
.
Every bachelor in the village wanted to dance with her.
The history here is genuinely odd and worth knowing. Fraŭlino came first, straight from German Fräulein, and meant Miss. Then Esperanto's own machinery took over: if a word ends in -ino it must be the feminine of something, so the something was invented, and was born. German has no equivalent. The language reverse-engineered a masculine out of a borrowed feminine, which is the sort of thing an agglutinative system does when you let it run.
In use, is an unmarried man and an unmarried woman, though the second is now more often read as the title Miss than as a statement about marriage, and plenty of speakers avoid it for that reason. A who is about to stop being one is a fianĉo, and after the wedding he is an edzo. Those three words are the whole timeline.
Where this fits
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fraŭlo: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "fraŭlo" (bachelor, unmarried man): 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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Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 40.