kombi

The joke closes here. A hundred and seventy ranks ago the kombini page set up a trap and then told you the punchline: kombini, to combine, is not komb- plus -in-, because if it were, kombino would mean a lady doing something with a comb. It said, flatly, "Esperanto really does have a verb kombi, to comb". That verb is this page. Combining is still not a woman combing, and now you can see both halves of the sentence at once.

Which is the useful shape of the lesson. Kombi is a genuine Esperanto root. -In- is a genuine Esperanto suffix. The trap works precisely because both pieces are real: what fails is the join, since kombin- was imported whole from Late Latin combinare and never passed through either. Two true things do not make a true derivation.

In use. Transitive, and it takes the person or the hair as its object: kombi la harojn, kombi la infanon, or reflexively kombi sin, which is what you say about your own head. The tool is a kombilo - -il-, the suffix for instruments, doing entirely ordinary work - and kombiĝi is for hair that combs out easily. Malkombita means dishevelled, hair that has been un-combed.

The neighbours. A broso is a brush and brosi is to brush, which is the other half of the same morning. Kombilo for the teeth, broso for the bristles, and Esperanto keeps the two apart as tidily as English does.