vivteni

Decoded: viv- plus teni, hold-in-life. Both halves already have pages - vivi at rank 76 and teni at 351 - and the compound means what the sum says, which is not always true of compounds. You hold something in life: a plant, an animal, a fire, a person, an institution. This is a straight root-plus-root compound with no linking -o-, the commonest shape in the language.

Watch vivteni sin. The reflexive is where an English speaker meets the word most often, and it does not translate as sustaining yourself. Vivteni sin per io is to make a living from something, to keep body and soul together by it. Mi vivtenas min per instruado - I make my living by teaching. There is no separate Esperanto word for "to earn a living" that is as common as this one, so vivteni sin is doing a job English spreads across three idioms.

Do not confuse it with subteni. Subteni is to support in the sense of backing, propping, endorsing - a wall, an argument, a candidate. Vivteni is only ever about keeping alive. A government subtenas a policy and vivtenas a population, and swapping them produces a sentence that is grammatical and quietly ridiculous.