Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of poŝtmarko
Coloured illustration of poŝtmarko
#1799 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

postage stamp

Word origin

An Esperanto compound of poŝto ('post, mail') and marko ('mark, stamp'). Poŝto goes back through Italian posta to Latin ponere, 'to place', for the stations where relay horses were placed along a road; marko is Germanic.

Origin
Esperanto compound
Root
poŝto + marko
English cognates
post, postal, mark

Examples

.

I put a stamp on the letter.

.

He collects stamps from many countries.

.

That stamp is very old and costs a lot.

A clean two-root compound, and one where knowing the halves gets you the whole family. is the postal service, o the postman, o the post office, a postcard, and marko is a mark or a token stuck on to show something. A stamp is a postal mark. Compounds like this are put together exactly as the compounding article describes, main root last: the thing is a , and poŝt- says which kind.

Now the trap, and it is a good one. is the post; poŝo is a pocket. One letter apart, and both plausible in a sentence about a letter, so and are two entirely different afternoons. The t is doing all the work. Keep the two roots apart in your head from the start, because they will not stop looking alike.

Where this fits

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Esperanto · Free printables

poŝtmarko: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "poŝtmarko" (postage stamp): 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 36.