Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of kapdoloro
Coloured illustration of kapdoloro
#1887 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

headache

Word origin

A compound made inside Esperanto, not a borrowing: kapo 'head' plus doloro 'pain'. Kapo goes back to Latin caput and doloro to Latin dolor, but the joining is Zamenhof's, and it follows the German and Slavic habit of naming an ailment by its part and its sensation rather than reaching for a Greek word like cephalalgia.

Origin
Esperanto
Root
kapo + doloro
English cognates
capital, dolorous, condolence

Examples

.

I have a bad headache.

.

After the long journey she was suffering from a headache.

.

The noise in the street gave everyone a headache.

plus , head plus pain, and that is the whole word. Notice what happened to the -o of : it dropped. Esperanto lets you keep the connecting vowel or leave it out, and the rule is only that the result must be pronounceable, so is standard and kapodoloro is also correct but clumsier. Keep it when the consonants would pile up; drop it when they would not. More in compounding.

The pattern is fully productive, and this is the reason to learn it as a pattern rather than as a word. Body part plus gives you the whole medical waiting room: dentodoloro toothache, ventrodoloro stomach ache, gorĝdoloro a sore throat, dorsdoloro backache. English makes you learn "toothache" but "sore throat" and "backache", each by rote. Here you learn one join and get the lot. Note also the preposition: you suffer pro , because of a headache, rather than "from" one.

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Esperanto · Free printables

kapdoloro: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "kapdoloro" (headache): 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 38.