orkestro

The false seam is a good one, and it needs handling honestly. Esperanto has the suffix -estr-, meaning the head or chief of something: lernejestro is a headteacher, urbestro a mayor, ŝipestro a captain. So orkestro looks like or- plus -estr- plus -o, and a learner who has spent this course being rewarded for splitting words will read it as some sort of leader.

It is not. An orchestra is not a collection of chiefs, or- is not a root that means anything relevant (oro is gold), and orkestr- is one indivisible borrowed root under Rule 15.

But here is the part most textbooks skip. The Greek orkhestra really is a place, and it really is where the name comes from: the flat semicircle in front of a Greek theatre's stage, where the chorus sang and danced. The Romans kept the word and sat their senators there. Renaissance and baroque Europe put the musicians in the same spot, and after a couple of centuries the room handed its name to the people in it. So the word does contain a hidden meaning, and the meaning is dancing floor, not leadership. The pieces you can see are real and belong to Greek, which is not this language. Same verdict as modifi and kapitalo in this same band, different source language.

The one who does lead. The conductor is dirigento, from dirigi, to direct. Not orkestrestro, though the compound is transparent enough that you would be understood, and you will occasionally see it used as a joke.

The family already on the site. Muziko, violono, trumpeto, fluto and koncerto are all here already, and this word is the container for them. Our story La festivalo puts two trumpets and one flute on a wooden stage in a village square and lets them play too loudly, which is the small end of the same idea.

Derived forms. Orkestra is orchestral, orkestri is to orchestrate a piece, and orkestrejo is the orchestra pit - the -ej- place suffix taking the word back, after two and a half thousand years, to meaning a floor.