Kilo Lingo

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Translation

propaganda; promotion, active spreading of a cause

Word origin

From Latin propaganda, things that must be spread, a gerundive of propagare ('to propagate'). It entered the wider languages through the Vatican's Congregatio de Propaganda Fide of 1622, a missionary office, and only picked up its bad smell in the twentieth century.

Origin
Latin
Root
propagare
English cognates
propaganda, propagate

Examples

.

The old newspaper was full of propaganda.

.

For the early Esperantists, propaganda simply meant teaching the language.

.

The party's propaganda hides the truth.

Read this one historically or you will misread the movement's own literature. Through the 1900s and 1930s propagandi meant nothing more sinister than promoting Esperanto: leaflets, evening classes, a stall at the fair. Local groups had a propaganda and were proud of it. The word soured in every European language after the world wars, so modern Esperanto usually says varbado or o for honest promotion and keeps for the dishonest kind. The -and- in the middle is not a suffix, incidentally: Esperanto has no -and-, and the root here is the whole borrowed -.

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Esperanto · Free printables

propagando: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "propagando" (propaganda; promotion, active spreading of a cause): 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 34.