preskribi

The most tempting false seam on the site, and it is worth the paragraph. Look at the word. Pre plus skribi. And skribi, to write, is not some fossil you have to take on trust: it is rank 207, one of the first hundred verbs you ever met, and it is right there in the middle of this word looking back at you. Every instinct the course has trained says split it.

Do not. Esperanto has no pre- prefix. The prefix meaning before is antaŭ- - antaŭvidi, to foresee; antaŭdiri, to predict; antaŭpagi, to pay in advance. If Esperanto were building this word from its own parts it would be antaŭskribi, and that is not the word.

What is actually going on. Latin praescribere is prae plus scribere, and that seam is completely real - two thousand years old, and belonging to a language that is not this one. Esperanto borrowed the finished compound whole under Rule 15, exactly as it borrowed inspiri and preventi in this same band. The visible pieces are honest history and dead grammar, and the fact that one of the fossils happens to match a live Esperanto root is a coincidence that makes it more dangerous rather than less.

The safe rule, once more: split only where both halves are Esperanto words that combine to the meaning you have. Pre is not a word. The test fails at the first half and never reaches the second.

The two senses, and they are the Latin ones.

• The doctor's. La kuracisto preskribis medikamenton. The piece of paper is a recepto at rank 2,267 - the same word that means a cooking recipe, which is a small joke the language did not intend and does not correct. Preskribo also works for the prescription itself.
• The rule-maker's. A law, a regulation or a standard preskribas what must be done. This is closer to the original: praescriptio was the heading at the top of a document, the part that set the terms.

Against its neighbours. Ordoni is to order somebody about, person to person. Preskribi is impersonal and written: it is what a text does, whether that text is a statute or a note on a pad. Preskriba means prescriptive, which is the word you want for the kind of grammarian this site tries not to be.