Translation
to milk
Word origin
From German melken, and beyond that from the Indo-European root that also gives English milk, Latin mulgere and Greek amelgein. It is one of the oldest verbs in the family, which is what you would expect of the thing people have been doing to cattle for eight thousand years.
- Origin
- German
- Root
- melken
- English cognates
- milk, emulsion
Examples
.
The farmer milks the cows every morning.
, .
She learned to milk when she was a child.
.
They milked a lot of milk from one cow.
A farmyard , and one of the few roots that is Germanic rather
than Romance. Most of the vocabulary in this part of the frequency list came
in from Latin or French; came from German melken, and it is close
enough to English milk that an English speaker does not have to learn it so
much as recognise it. The vowel is the giveaway: Germanic languages kept the
-lk- cluster, and Latin turned the same root into mulgere, which is where
emulsion sneaks in - an emulsion is, etymologically, something milked out.
Watch the split between the and the substance.Lakto is milk the stuff, and it is Latin
lac, lactis, the same root as lactose and lactic. is the action,
and it is German. Esperanto is quite happy to take the noun from one family and
the verb from another where both were internationally recognisable, and this is
a clean example: nobody would guess from that the verb is , and
both are transparent to somebody.
The built family, all regular. o is a milker by trade, o a
milking machine, o the activity, o the milking parlour, and
melkbovino a dairy cow - literally a milk-cow, exactly as German has
Melkkuh. a is worth a look too: it means fit to be milked, and it is
the ordinary agricultural word rather than a joke. And yes, the figurative sense
transfers - somebody for money reads in Esperanto just as it does in
English - but it is not the sense to reach for first.
Where this fits
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melki: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "melki" (to milk): 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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Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 57.