Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of volumo
Coloured illustration of volumo
#2166 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

volume, tome (of a book)

Word origin

From Latin volumen, a roll or scroll, from volvere, to roll. A book was a rolled sheet before it was a stack of leaves, and the word kept the shape of the older object.

Origin
Latin
Root
volumen
English cognates
volume, revolve, voluble

Examples

.

This book runs to five volumes.

.

The library has all the volumes.

.

He published the last volume after many years.

Take the gloss narrowly. In careful Esperanto a is a physically bound book, one of the several that together make up a longer work: the third of an encyclopaedia, the two of a collected edition. It is a thing on a shelf, not a quantity.

The two senses English piles onto the same word live elsewhere. The space a body occupies is volumeno - the geometrical volume, the one measured in cubic metres. Loudness is o, built from and the -- suffix, or sonforteco if you want to be technical about it. Asking someone to turn down the will be understood, because everybody knows what you mean, but it is an English sentence wearing Esperanto endings.

Now the seam, which is a trap and a gift at once. The -um- in the middle looks exactly like the suffix that means "something to do with the root, and I decline to say what", the one covered in -um and word formation. It is not. - is one borrowed root and the word is not vol- plus -um- plus -o. And yet the history behind it is real: Latin en was formed from e, to roll, which Esperanto also holds as . So and are genuinely relatives - they simply became relatives in Latin, two thousand years before Esperanto existed, and the joint no longer opens.

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Esperanto · Free printables

volumo: worksheet, infographic and listicle

Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "volumo" (volume, tome (of a book)): 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 44.