salato

The best false seam in this band, because it is half true. Salato looks exactly like salo (salt) plus -at-, the present passive participle: salata would mean being salted. In Esperanto that reading is simply wrong. -at- is a verb suffix and there is no verb sali in the citation form the analysis needs, participles are adjectives and end in -a rather than -o, and salato is a single borrowed root that cannot be pulled apart.

And yet the meaning it suggests is precisely right. Italian insalata is the past participle of insalare, to salt, from Latin sal. A salad is, etymologically, the salted thing. So the learner's instinct decodes the word's history perfectly while breaking its grammar completely - the same trap inspiri sets, where the in- and the spir- are real Latin and useless Esperanto.

The lesson generalises: a false seam that yields the right meaning is more dangerous than one that yields nonsense, because nothing warns you. Keep the etymology as a memory hook and keep it out of your word-building.

Two senses. Salato is the dish and also the leaf: kapsalato is a head of lettuce, verda salato a green salad. A salatujo is a salad bowl. And the same Latin sal is quietly inside saŭco and inside English salary, which was once salt money.