okulharo

Eye-hair. Okulo is an eye, at rank 107. Haro is a hair, at rank 539. An eyelash is a hair that grows on your eye, and Esperanto simply says so. English had to borrow nothing here - eyelash is honest Germanic compounding too - but French needs cil and Spanish needs pestaña, both of them cold roots you learn one at a time.

The sibling, and it is close by.Lipharo arrived at rank 2,593: lip-hair, a moustache. Same second element, same logic, and now you have the pattern:

• okulharo - eye-hair, an eyelash
• lipharo - lip-hair, a hair of a moustache
• barbharo - beard-hair
• korpharo - body hair
• nazharo - nose hair, since somebody had to say it

And the same trap about number. A lipharo is one hair and the moustache is lipharoj; okulharo behaves identically. One okulharo is a single lash, the thing that gets in your eye and ruins the afternoon. The lashes, as a set, are okulharoj. Almost every sentence you write about a face wants the plural, and the singular is nearly always a sentence about one hair having gone somewhere it should not.

The one that is not built this way. The eyebrow is brovo at rank 2,393 - a separate root, not okulsuprharo or anything of the kind. This is worth noticing rather than resenting. Esperanto compounds where the compound is natural and borrows where a short root already exists internationally, and it has no ambition to be consistent about which. The eyelid is palpebro, also its own root, and the tear is larmo. Around one eye you therefore have one compound and three borrowings, which is roughly the mix of the whole language.

Where to find the rest of the face. The chapter-9 body review, La korpo, walks from head to foot and picks up vizaĝo, buŝo, nazo and orelo on the way. This word and lipharo are the two that hang off that list by compounding rather than by a root of their own.