Translation
pill, tablet
Word origin
From Latin pilula, a little ball, the diminutive of pila, a ball. The medicine is named for its shape, and so, along a different route, is English pellet.
- Origin
- Latin
- Root
- pilula
- English cognates
- pill, pellet
Examples
.
The doctor gave me a small pill.
.
Take one pill every morning.
.
She drank water with the pill.
is a pill or tablet: , , in the contraceptive sense as in English. The wider word is medikamento, which covers any medicine in any form; is specifically the small round dose.
A seam that looks obvious and is wrong. Pilko is a ball, and is a small ball-shaped thing, so it is tempting to read the word as plus a suffix. There is no suffix -- in Esperanto - the list of real suffixes does not contain one - and - is a single borrowed root. What is true is the older, deeper connection: both words go back through Latin pila, a ball, so the resemblance is inherited rather than constructed. That is the difference this band keeps turning up. Etymology explains where a word came from; word-building tells you what you may do with it. Only the second one lets you make new words.
If you want a genuinely small ball in Esperanto, use the real diminutive: o.
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pilolo: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "pilolo" (pill, tablet): 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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Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 42.