Translation
flat and even
Word origin
From French plat, which goes back through Latin to Greek platys, broad and flat. The same Greek root gives English plate, plateau, platform and platypus, the flat-footed animal.
- Origin
- French, from Greek
- Root
- platys
- English cognates
- plate, plateau, platypus
Examples
.
The field is as flat as a table.
.
Put the book on a flat surface.
.
The stone was flat and cold.
The pair to fix in your head is against glata. is about shape: the surface does not rise or fall, it is level all the way across. is about texture: nothing catches when you run a hand over it. A cobbled street can be without being remotely , and a large ball bearing is and not at all. English lets flat and smooth blur into each other; Esperanto does not, and using the wrong one is a small but distinctly foreign-sounding mistake.
The family around it is a genuine tangle, and the plado page sorts it out at length: a is the plate you eat from, a is the serving dish and by extension the food on it, and a plato is a flat slab of anything - a metal sheet, a paving stone, a record. All of them and come off the same Greek root for broadness, which is satisfying and completely useless for telling them apart. Learn the four objects, not the etymology.
Two derivations you will meet: i is to flatten something, and rather than o is the usual word for a plain in the landscape sense.
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plata: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "plata" (flat and even): 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 43.