Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of instali
Coloured illustration of instali
#2061 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

to install; to set up, to fit

Word origin

From French installer, from Medieval Latin installare, built on stallum, a stall or seat. To install a churchman was literally to put him in his stall in the choir, and the software sense is the same act done to a machine.

Origin
French
Root
installare
English cognates
install, stall

Examples

.

He installed a new program on the computer.

.

We have to fit the lamp above the door.

, .

The device is big, but you can install it in one day.

is the everyday word for putting equipment, furniture or software where it belongs and making it work: , , . The older human sense survives too, so a bishop or a director can be in a post, and sin is to settle yourself somewhere.

Now the false seam, because this word invites one. looks decomposable into inst- plus a suffix --, and it is not. Esperanto has no suffix --. The -a at the end of an adjective is a grammatical ending, not an affix, and there is nothing here to peel off: the root is instal-, borrowed whole. If you want the noun, you add a real ending to the whole root - instalo the act, o the installed thing, o the installer program.

That distinction is the single most useful habit in Esperanto vocabulary. A word either decomposes into roots and documented affixes or it does not, and guessing wrong invents words nobody uses. When you meet a long international borrowing, check whether the pieces are real affixes before you trust the seam.

Where this fits

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Esperanto · Free printables

instali: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "instali" (to install; to set up, to fit): 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 42.