Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of ranĉo
Coloured illustration of ranĉo
#2014 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

ranch

Word origin

From American Spanish rancho, a group of people lodging together and then the place they lodge, from ranchearse, to settle in. The Spanish word itself comes from French se ranger, to arrange oneself in a row.

Origin
Spanish
Root
rancho
English cognates
ranch, rank, range

Examples

.

They work on a big ranch with a hundred horses.

.

The ranch has a thousand head of cattle and a big house.

.

We spent the summer on my uncle's ranch.

Note the hat. is written with ĉ, and the x-system slug for it is rancxo, because the Spanish ch sound is exactly what ĉ is for. Getting this wrong and writing gives you a different word entirely: ranca is rancid.

is a specifically New World kind of farm, the cattle-and-horses sort with a lot of land. The general word is bieno, an estate or farm of any kind, and that is what you want for a European smallholding. Esperanto borrowed for the same reason English did, because there was no European word for the thing.

It is a good demonstration that the language is not confined to Latin and Greek. Zamenhof's rule was to take the most internationally recognisable form, and by the twentieth century rancho had travelled far enough on the back of American westerns to qualify. The same logic later brought in kaŭboj, and bumerango.

Where this fits

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Esperanto · Free printables

ranĉo: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "ranĉo" (ranch): 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 41.