konkurenco

This is the third leg of a stool the other two pages already built. English flattens one noun over three distinct Esperanto words, and both konkurso at 1,626 and konkuri at 2,211 spend part of their pages fencing off this one. Here is the complete set:

• konkurso - an organised competition you ENTER. Entries, a closing date, a jury, a prize. A music competition, a writing competition.
• konkurenco - competition as a CONDITION. Rival firms in a market, the pressure they put on each other, the thing that drives prices down.
• konkuri - the verb, to compete, konkuri kun a rival pri a prize.
• konkuranto - a competitor, the person or firm doing it.

Reach for konkurso when you mean konkurenco and you have written a sentence about the local bakery entering a talent show. It is the commonest single mistake an English speaker makes in this corner of the vocabulary.

Not konkuri plus a suffix. The -enc- on the end looks like it ought to be one, and Esperanto has no such suffix: konkurenc- is a single root that arrived whole from German and French, alongside the separate roots konkur- and konkurs-. The three are relatives by descent, not by Esperanto word-building, which is why all three had to be borrowed rather than derived.

Where you will actually meet it. Mostly in writing about business and about rival projects: firms in a market, newspapers chasing the same readers, one constructed language against another. Konkurenca is the adjective, a konkurenca prezo is a competitive one, and senkonkurenca means with no rival in the field at all.