Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of rango
Coloured illustration of rango
#1943 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

rank; standing, grade

Word origin

From French rang and German Rang, both from Frankish hring, a ring or circle. A ring of men drawn up became a row, a row became a grade, and the grade is what survives. English ring, rank and range all grew from the same Germanic root.

Origin
Frankish, via French
Root
hring
English cognates
rank, range, arrange, ring

Examples

.

He reached the rank of captain before the war.

.

In the army every rank has its own name.

.

She spoke with a person of high rank in the government.

is position in a graded order. It covers military rank (oficiro, generalo) and social standing equally, and it takes for what the rank is: . Where English hedges between rank and grade, Esperanto uses the one word.

A false seam. Esperanto has no suffix -ng-. The ng in is simply two letters of the root, pronounced as they are written - ran-go, with a hard g, never the single nasal sound English gives "rang". Nor is ran- a root you can peel off. Compare rano, a frog: one letter apart, entirely unrelated, and a slip worth avoiding in a sentence about the army.

The root is productive in ordinary ways. Rangi is to rank or to hold a rank, altranga describes someone senior, malaltranga someone junior, and rangaltigo is a promotion. Alongside it, titolo is the label you are given and is the level you occupy - a colonel's is colonel, his is where that sits above a major.

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Esperanto · Free printables

rango: worksheet, infographic and listicle

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This word is part of lesson 39.