teknologio

A pattern rather than a word. -Ologio names a field of study, and once you have met two of them you can read the rest without help. Biologio at rank 2,077 was the first in this course: bio- life, -logio the study of it. After that come geologio, psikologio, arkeologio, sociologio, teologio, zoologio, filologio. The practitioner takes -isto (biologo or biologiisto, psikologo) and the adjective takes -ia (teknologia, biologia).

The purist fence, which is real but losing. Read strictly, teknologio is the study of technique, and the tools themselves are tekniko. On that account la nova tekniko is the new technology and teknologio is what a university department does. Plenty of careful writers still hold the line. Most speakers do not: international usage, pulled hard by English, has made teknologio the ordinary word for the machines and the methods, and the frequency list reflects that. Both are defensible, and knowing which one you are choosing is the point.

Where it sits among the neighbours.Scienco is science, the pursuit of knowledge. Tekniko is technique or applied craft. Inĝenierarto is engineering. Industrio is industry, the productive sector. A maŝino and a komputilo are particular pieces of it. And the Esperanto word for the branch of technology a learner meets first is often built rather than borrowed: komputilo is literally a computing-tool, -il- doing the work that English does with a Latin agent noun.