Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of poŝto
Coloured illustration of poŝto
#1961 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

the post, the mail; the postal service

Word origin

From Italian posta by way of French poste, and behind both of them the Latin posita, 'placed'. A Roman mansio posita was a relay station placed at a fixed interval along a road, and the whole idea of a postal system is that word: not the letter, but the chain of stations the letter is handed along.

Origin
Latin
Root
posita
English cognates
post, postal, position

Examples

.

I sent the letter by post.

?

Is the new post office next to the school?

.

He worked at the post office in my town for ten years.

One letter separates from poŝo, which is a pocket, and the two have nothing to do with each other: came in from French poche, from Italian posta. A chapter-19 agent flagged the pair as a trap and it is worth naming out loud, because both words are common and both turn up in ordinary sentences about carrying things. is your pocket. is the counter with the queue.

covers the service and, in everyday speech, the building: is going to the post office, exactly as in English. The formal word for the building is , built from poŝt- plus oficejo, and you will meet it in official prose and almost nowhere else.

The root is productive, and poŝtmarko is the one you already know: poŝt- plus , a mark for the post, which is what a stamp is. o is the postman, the postcard, poŝtkesto the letterbox. Learn the root and four words arrive with it.

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Esperanto · Free printables

poŝto: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "poŝto" (the post, the mail; the postal service): 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 40.