Translation
indifferent, unconcerned
Word origin
From Latin indifferens, made of in- 'not' and differens, the present participle of differre, 'to carry apart, to differ'. Something indifferent originally made no difference; the English shift from the thing not mattering to the person not caring happened in Latin's daughters and Esperanto inherited the finished sense.
- Origin
- Latin
- Root
- indifferens
- English cognates
- indifferent, different, differ, transfer
Examples
.
He remained indifferent to the whole business.
.
Her face was indifferent and cold.
.
Nobody can stay unmoved in the face of such pain.
The person or the thing can be : he does not care, that is all the same to me. The second use overlaps with egala, and the idiom worth stealing is egale, it is all one to me, which is what an Esperanto speaker says far more often than the longer adjective.
The seam trap is the front of the word rather than the back. That in- is a Latin negative prefix riding along inside a borrowed root, not the Esperanto suffix -in-, which makes feminines (o, o). Prefix and suffix are spelled the same and do entirely different jobs, and here neither one is actually in play: indiferent- is one indivisible root.
If you want the Esperanto-built opposite, it is not a negation of this word at all. Use a (caring, attentive) or a, both of which say what the person does rather than what they fail to do.
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indiferenta: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "indiferenta" (indifferent, unconcerned): 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 39.