Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of papago
Coloured illustration of papago
#2281 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

parrot

Word origin

Through French papegai and Spanish papagayo from Arabic babbaghā', the bird's name across the medieval Mediterranean trade. English took the same word twice: once as the archaic popinjay, and once, much later and by a different road, as parrot.

Origin
Arabic, via Spanish and French
Root
babbaghā'
English cognates
popinjay, papagayo

Examples

, .

The parrot repeats everything we say.

.

Her parrot has green and yellow feathers.

.

The bird in the cage is a big parrot.

No -ag- suffix, and no inside it either. This is the false seam worth naming, because both halves look real. Esperanto genuinely has papo for a pope, and it genuinely has ago for a deed, off . Put them together and ought to mean something like a papal act. It does not, and it never has: - is one indivisible root, borrowed whole from a chain of trade languages, and the resemblance to is the sort of accident that a productive affix system trains you to over-read. Esperanto has no -ag- affix at all. When a word ends in -ago, check the dictionary before you take it apart.

What it does with the roots it can take. A young one is o, a female is o, and the verb the language actually uses about parrots is i - to parrot, to repeat without understanding - which is the -um- suffix doing what it does best, standing in for a relationship too specific to have its own affix. is the neutral word for imitating; i carries the sneer.

The one to keep apart is plumo. A parrot's feathers are , and so is a pen, because Esperanto took the French e with both meanings attached. Context sorts it out every time, but a sentence about a parrot and a writing desk in the same breath will make you look twice.

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Esperanto · Free printables

papago: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "papago" (parrot): 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 46.