Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of kortegano
Coloured illustration of kortegano
#2734 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

courtier

Word origin

Three Esperanto pieces on top of one borrowed root: korto ('yard, courtyard'), from Latin cohors, then -eg- to make it grand, then -an- to make somebody a member of it.

Origin
Esperanto derivation
Root
kort- + -eg- + -an-
English cognates
court, courtier, cohort

Examples

.

The courtiers waited for the king in the great hall.

.

He was a rich courtier at the young king's court.

.

No courtier dared to tell the truth.

Peel it in the order it was built. is a yard, the space enclosed by a building. Add --, the augmentative, and you get kortego: not a big yard but a royal court, the household and the ceremony that fills it. Then add -an-, the member suffix, and you get a member of that household: a courtier. Nothing was borrowed except the first four letters, and English arrived at courtier by very nearly the same route several centuries earlier.

-An- is one of the best machines in the language. It turns any group into its members and it never asks permission: o a club member, o a townsperson, o a villager, a fellow believer, a Christian, o a republican, o a crew member, o a member of the family. Learn the suffix once and you have several hundred words. It pairs naturally with --, which gives you the person in charge of the same thing, so a o runs the court that a merely lives in.

The register is historical, and slightly sceptical. A is a courtier in the full sense English gives the word: somebody whose occupation is being present. o is the condition, a is the adjective, and i would be to hang about a court to no purpose, which is the sort of thing -um- is for.

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Esperanto · Free printables

kortegano: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "kortegano" (courtier): 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 55.