striko

One letter from a completely different word, so let us say it out loud.Strikta at rank 2,084 means tight or strict. Striko at rank 2,612 means a walkout. They share four letters and nothing else: strikt- is Latin strictus, drawn tight, and strik- is English strike borrowed for the industrial sense. A strikta regulo is a strict rule. A strika regulo would be a rule about strikes. The t is the whole difference and it is worth a moment now rather than an embarrassment later.

The verb comes free. Striki is to be on strike, and it is intransitive: la laboristoj strikas. You do not strike a thing. The person is a strikanto, a striker, using the plain present participle rather than -ist-, because being on strike is something you are doing this week and not a profession.

• striki - to be on strike
• ekstriki - to come out on strike, -ek- marking the start of it
• strikrompulo - a strike-breaker, a scab
• malsatstriko - a hunger strike

Which strike this is. English strike does a dozen jobs and Esperanto takes only one of them. To strike a match is ekbruligi alumeton; to strike somebody is frapi; a clock strikes with sonori; lightning strikes with trafi. Striko is industrial action and nothing else, which is a mercy.

The movement connection. The Esperanto workers' movement was large enough between the wars to have its own press, and striko turns up constantly in it: the language spread through trade-union correspondence networks in the 1920s and 1930s almost as much as through the neutral clubs. That history is why an industrial word sits this high in a frequency list built from early-century prose.