Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of recepto
Coloured illustration of recepto
#2267 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

recipe; a doctor's prescription

Word origin

From Latin receptum, a thing taken, from recipere, to take back, which is re- plus capere, to take. The medical sense comes from the Latin imperative Recipe, Take, that once headed every prescription.

Origin
Latin
Root
receptum
English cognates
recipe, receipt, receive, reception

Examples

.

My grandfather gave me his recipe for bread.

.

The doctor wrote a prescription for medicine.

?

Did you read the whole recipe before cooking?

Both senses are real, and PIV lists them both. is the doctor's prescription and the cook's recipe, in that historical order. That is not sloppiness in Esperanto: it is exactly what happened in English too, where recipe and receipt are the same Latin word and a Victorian cookbook prints receipts for cakes. The two uses share one idea, a written set of instructions for making something up, and Esperanto simply never split them.

Context does the disambiguating, and it always can. is a recipe. is a prescription. If you need to be unmistakable, kuirrecepto narrows it to cooking and a to medicine, but both are heavier than the situation usually requires.

Why the Latin imperative matters. A prescription used to open with Recipe, meaning "take", addressed to the pharmacist: take so much of this, so much of that. The instruction became the name of the document. The R with a stroke through its leg still printed at the top of prescription pads is that same word.

Around it. Instrukcio is instructions in general, is to prescribe, and preskribo is the prescribing rather than the paper. Kuiri is to cook and kuirlibro is the cookbook the recipes live in.

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Esperanto · Free printables

recepto: worksheet, infographic and listicle

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This word is part of lesson 46.