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Does the word "frazo" comes from the English word "phrase"? Or is there a closer word in an other Latin language which "frazo" is a derivative of?

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The Italian word frase is pronounced (sans the different vowel ending) like in Esperanto and means sentence, like in Esperanto. (According to Wiktionary, Catalan, Asturian, and Portuguese also use the word frase, but they were, as far as I know, not root repositories for Esperanto.)

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  • French also has phrase with the same meaning as in Esperanto.
    – Mutre
    Commented Aug 25, 2016 at 7:12
  • AFAIK ?? what do you mean?
    – benahm
    Commented Aug 25, 2016 at 9:13
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    @Ben1001: "AFAIK" is a standard abbreviation for "as far as I know". IMO you should really be prepared for that kind of thing and should have no trouble looking up what you don't know with a quick web search, but YMMV. LOL.
    – user54
    Commented Aug 25, 2016 at 10:18
  • OK thanks i edited the anwser hope that @nerimkinde will accept that, so people like me will not have to do a web search to get meaning of the anwser ;)
    – benahm
    Commented Aug 25, 2016 at 10:41
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From Latin "phrasis", itself from Greek "φρασις": manner of expression. This is where we get "phrase" in English.

http://perseus.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.80:1:184.LSJ

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Among the main languages that Zamenhof used to form Esperanto roots (French, Latin, Italian, German, English, Russian and Polish), French and Italian have a word which justifies both the form and the meaning of "frazo". French has "phrase", pronounced as Esperanto "fraz", and Italian has "frase", pronounced as Esperanto "fraze". Both words cover both the meaning of "sentence", which Zamenhof took over to be the meaning of the Esperanto word "frazo", and the meaning of "phrase", for which Zamenhof didn't use "frazo". (The English "phrase" can be translated to Esperanto as "esprimo", "vortgrupo", "sintagmo" or "frazeto", depending on context.)

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    Some styling to the answer will be good
    – benahm
    Commented Aug 25, 2016 at 10:50
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Here are some possible origins:

  • English - phrase. Substitute 'ph' for 'f' and 'esperantize' the 'e' for 'o' and you'll get frazo.
  • French - phrase. The same transformation applies.
  • Russian - фраза. Means the same as frazo and sounds very similar to it.
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