tendenco

No suffix here, whatever your eye says. Esperanto really does have an -end- suffix, and it is productive: pagenda means that must be paid, legenda that must be read, farenda that must be done. Reading tend-enc-o therefore feels like decoding rather than guessing. It is not. The root is tendenc-, one indivisible block, and there is no -enc- suffix in the language at all.

And it is not tent-ish. Tendo at rank 1,780 is a tent and tendaro at 2,262 is a campsite. A tendency has nothing to do with either in Esperanto: neither word is built from the other, and no rule of the language connects them. The one honest footnote is that Latin got both from tendere, to stretch, since a tent is a stretched thing and a tendency is a stretching towards. That is a curiosity about Latin, not a licence to decompose the Esperanto word.

The neighbours, and how they differ.Inklino, rank 1,851, is a personal leaning, the pull you feel towards something. Kutimo, rank 294, is a habit, a thing already established by repetition. Modo, rank 1,563, is a fashion, which is a trend that knows it is one. Tendenco is the neutral, measurable word: the direction the numbers are going, whether or not anybody intended it. Tendenca means tendentious, so mind that one.