Here just for light relief is a catalogue of accidental by‐products of Esperanto's neat snap‐together derivational system: words that can be interpreted in either of two unrelated ways.
| Meaning A | Esperanto | Meaning B |
|---|---|---|
| “a purchase” | aĉeto | “a contemptible little thing” |
| “to alternate” | alterni | “to sneeze at” |
| “avarice” | avaro | “a group of grandfathers” |
| “a banana” | banano | “a bath member” |
| “a barbarian” | barbaro | “a group of beards” |
| “a thankful person” | dankanto | “Danesong” |
| “to delegate” | delegi | “to read off” |
| “a diet” | dieto | “a minor deity” |
| “an exterior” | ekstero | “a former world” |
| “an accomplishment” | elfaro | “a group of elves” |
| “a daughter” | filino | “dirty linen” |
| “a galley” | galero | “a drop of bile” |
| “a colleague” | kolego | “a big neck” |
| “a pumpkin” | kukurbo | “a city of cakes” |
| “lavendery” | lavenda | “in need of cleaning” |
| “an oxeye daisy” | lekanto | “someone licking” |
| “menstruation” | menstruo | “a mind‐hole” |
| “a casserole” | marmito | “a sea‐tale” |
| “a modulation” | modulo | “a fashionable guy” |
| “a niece” | nevino | “non‐wine” |
| “an eye” | okulo | “eighth person” |
| “a ream of paper” | paperaro | “a papal mistake” |
| “a person” | persono | “a sounding‐out” |
| “a demand” | postulo | “a successor” |
| “pretend” | pretenda | “needing to be ready” |
| “speed” | rapido | “a turnip‐sprout” |
| “regular” | regula | “aristocratic” |
| “a re‐seeing” | revido | “a child of a daydream” |
| “a sardine” | sardino | “a Sardinian woman” |
| “sensitive” | sentema | “without theme” |
| “sugar” | sukero | “a drop of juice” |
| “superiority” | supero | “a serving of soup” |
| “a hole card” | trukarto | “art of faking” |
| “urine” | urino | “an aurochs cow” |
| “an evening” | vespero | “a wasp component” |
| “virtuousness” | virtemo | “a manly topic” |
Many of these come from the longer list that Geoff Eddy used to maintain, which itself made no claims to being exhaustive. But for the benefit of those who insist I justify mentioning them, I'll say again that I am not presenting them as evidence that Esperanto has more such ambiguities than English – they're just funny!
That said, misinterpretable English words like unless aren't strictly comparable, because a natural language is defined by the usage habits of its native‐speaker community; the conjunction derived from the Middle English expression on lesse may look as if it should be a synonym for “more”, but that's not what it means. It's only artificial languages that are defined by the prescriptive grammarbooks they're learned from; and in Esperanto, the rules say the derivational morphology is universally productive, so if it's possible to construct a compound fi‑lino (literally “shameful flax”) then that word's as legitimate as any. Oh, and the mis‐division problem is not inevitable in a constructed language; for a start, hyphens could be compulsory.