Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of nepo
Coloured illustration of nepo
#2044 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

grandson; grandchild

Word origin

From Latin nepos, which meant both grandson and nephew and stayed ambiguous for centuries. English nephew came the same way through French neveu, and nepotism is literally the practice of finding jobs for your nephews.

Origin
Latin
Root
nepos
English cognates
nephew, nepotism, niece

Examples

.

My grandfather is playing with his grandson in the garden.

.

The old man told his grandson about the war.

.

A grandson is the son of your son or of your daughter.

Say it plainly, because the shape of the word invites a wrong guess: there is no - in . Esperanto really does have a productive negative prefix, and a learner who has just met or will try to read this one as not-a-, which is nonsense in both halves. is a live particle in Esperanto, the distributive one in , and reading as its negation gets you nowhere at all. The root is -, one piece, straight out of Latin nepos, and it means what your child's child is.

The gender question is the interesting one. Classically is a grandson, o a granddaughter, and oj the grandchildren of both sorts. In practice in the plural has long been read as grandchildren generally, and a good deal of modern writing uses the singular the same neutral way, especially in the family-tree sense of the third example above. Both readings are current; if you need to be unambiguous, say o or use o.

Beyond that the family works exactly as you would expect. o is a great-grandson, on the same - that gives o for a great-grandfather, and it stacks as far as your patience holds. The one thing Esperanto did not inherit from Latin is the nephew reading: for that you want , which sits one letter away and catches people out at least once.

Where this fits

Add to review queue

Track this word in your spaced-repetition queue and be tested on it at the right interval.

Go to my review queue

Esperanto · Free printables

nepo: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "nepo" (grandson; grandchild): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.

Free for members

The printable worksheets, infographics and PDFs are free with an account. Start a free week and download as many as you like.

Start your free week

This word is part of lesson 41.