Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of vagadi
Coloured illustration of vagadi
#1965 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

to keep wandering, to roam about

Word origin

The root is Latin vagari, 'to wander', which also gave English vagrant and vagabond. The rest of the word is pure Esperanto: -ad- is Zamenhof's own suffix for an action that goes on and on.

Origin
Latin
Root
vagari
English cognates
vagrant, vagabond, extravagant

Examples

.

We wandered around the old town all day long.

.

The dog roamed the forest for three days.

.

After the war many people roamed about with no home.

is vagi with -ad- in the middle, and that is the whole story: the suffix takes an action and stretches it out in time. is to wander; is to wander and go on wandering, for hours or for years. Nothing else changes. Same root, same grammar, same transitivity.

This is worth doing slowly, because -ad- is one of the highest-value affixes in the language and it is genuinely productive. is to sing and o is singing as an ongoing thing; is to speak and is a speech. Attached to a verb it gives you the durative verb, attached with -o it gives you the noun of the activity. The full picture, including where -ad- shades into repetition rather than duration, is in the affixes of aspect.

Do not read as more intense than . It is longer, not stronger. If you want the pleasant version of the same picture, promeni is to stroll with somewhere to come back to; is what you do when there is nowhere in particular to be.

Where this fits

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Esperanto · Free printables

vagadi: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "vagadi" (to keep wandering, to roam about): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.

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This word is part of lesson 40.