tumulto

Another word that looks built and is not. The letters -ult- sit in the middle of tumulto looking like a suffix, and Esperanto has no -ult- suffix at all: the root is tumult-, entire, straight from Latin. Nothing can be stripped off it. The same goes for rezulto, konsulto and insulto, all single roots wearing a false ending.

Tumulto is louder and more physical than plain noise. Bruo is any noise, including a pleasant one; tumulto needs people, movement and disorder, so it covers everything from a rowdy meeting to a small riot. Where the disorder is violent and political, ribelo (revolt) and ribelego are the stronger words. The verb is tumulti, to make an uproar, and tumulta describes a scene full of it.

A useful pairing for readers of nineteenth-century Esperanto prose, where this word turns up more than it does today: tumulto is what happens in the square, konfuzo is what happens in the heads of the people in it.