Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of postmorgaŭ
Coloured illustration of postmorgaŭ
#2377 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

the day after tomorrow

Word origin

A compound made inside Esperanto from post, after, and morgaŭ, tomorrow. Morgaŭ is German morgen, and post is Latin post, so the word is a Germanic day glued to a Latin preposition, which is Esperanto's usual way of working.

Origin
Esperanto
Root
post + morgaŭ
English cognates
postpone, posterior

Examples

.

We will see you the day after tomorrow.

.

The party is not tomorrow but the day after tomorrow.

.

The day after tomorrow I will travel to the town.

Two words you already have. Post is after. Morgaŭ is tomorrow. Stick them together and you get the day after tomorrow, in one word, with no new root to learn. English needs four words for this and German needs one (übermorgen); Esperanto builds it rather than borrowing it, which is why it is a nice small demonstration of what the language is for.

And it has a mirror. is the day before yesterday, built the same way from (before) and hieraŭ (yesterday). The pair is exactly symmetric, and learning them together costs nothing and fixes both:

  • - the day before yesterday
  • - yesterday
  • - today
  • - tomorrow
  • - the day after tomorrow

Five days in a row, and only three of them are roots. arrives a few ranks after this word in the same frequency band, so the course teaches them almost together.

Notice the -. , and all end in -, and so do , and . That ending marks a small closed set of primary adverbs that Zamenhof gave a distinct shape so they could not be mistaken for nouns or adjectives; it is not a suffix you can attach to anything. The is one syllable, so has three: post--gaŭ.

Using it. As an adverb it needs no preposition: . The adjective postmorgaŭa exists for the day's own things - postmorgaŭa , the meeting the day after tomorrow - and the accusative of time, postmorgaŭan , is possible but nobody writes it. For the rest of the clock and calendar, see telling the time and dates.

Where this fits

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Esperanto · Free printables

postmorgaŭ: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "postmorgaŭ" (the day after tomorrow): 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 48.