Translation
perfume
Word origin
From French parfum, from Italian perfumare, and behind that Latin per fumum, 'through smoke'. The oldest perfumes were resins burnt on a fire, so the word records the method rather than the bottle.
- Origin
- French, from Latin
- Root
- per fumum
- English cognates
- perfume, fume, fumigate
Examples
.
She gave me a small bottle of perfume.
.
The perfume of those flowers filled the whole room.
.
He smelled her perfume before seeing her.
A false seam with a true story behind it. The eye offers - plus fumo, and fumo really is the Esperanto word for smoke, so the guess feels safe. It is not a seam: - came into Esperanto whole from French, and - is not an Esperanto prefix at all.
But the smoke is real. The Latin behind the French is per fumum, "through smoke" - incense and resins burnt so that the scent rose off the fire. The relationship is a fact about Latin, not an instruction for taking the Esperanto word apart, which is exactly the position sits in with its "breathe into". Etymology like this is a gift for remembering a word and a trap for building new ones.
The family behaves normally. Parfumi is to perfume something, parfumita perfumed, o the shop. Keep it apart from odoro, which is a neutral smell of any kind, good or bad: is a manufactured or deliberately pleasant one, and using it for a drain would be a joke rather than an error.
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 queueEsperanto · Free printables
parfumo: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "parfumo" (perfume): 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 weekThis word is part of lesson 45.