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Line drawing of plago
Coloured illustration of plago
#2210 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

plague, scourge; affliction

Word origin

From Latin plaga, a blow or a wound, which came to mean a calamity sent as punishment. English plague and Spanish plaga are the same word.

Origin
Latin
Root
plaga
English cognates
plague

Examples

.

The war was a scourge for the whole country.

.

Insects attacked the fields like a plague.

.

That noise is a real affliction for the neighbours.

A is a large, lasting disaster falling on a whole population: the ten plagues of Egypt, a famine, a war, a swarm of locusts. It shades downward into ordinary exasperation as well, so a leaking roof or a noisy neighbour can be a in the same half-joking way English calls something a plague.

It is not the disease. Bubonic plague, the illness, is pesto. is the calamity in general - the blow that lands, which is exactly what the Latin plaga meant. Keeping the two apart matters in any historical text, where both turn up in the same paragraph.

A false seam. -Ag- is not a suffix here. Esperanto does have ago, an act or deed, and roots do end up in front of it (kunagi, to act together), but is not pl- plus ago: there is no root pl-, and the whole word came from Latin as one piece. Split it and nothing is left that means anything.

Where this fits

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Esperanto · Free printables

plago: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "plago" (plague, scourge; affliction): 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 45.