Here are some words translated from an artificial language. briftamint means…

2024

Here are some words translated from an artificial language.

briftamint means militant

uftonel means occupied

uftonalene means occupation

Which word could mean “occupant”?

  1. A.

    elbrifta

  2. B.

    uftonamint

  3. C.

    elamint

  4. D.

    briftalene

Attempted by 1 students.

Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: B

In artificial-language decoding puzzles, each invented word is built from a root (carrying the core meaning) plus a suffix (carrying a grammatical role). To find the root or suffix for an idea, compare two given words whose English translations share part of their meaning — the letters they share in the artificial language correspond to that shared meaning, and the leftover letters correspond to the leftover meaning.

  1. "uftonel" (occupied) and "uftonalene" (occupation) share the substring "ufton", and "occupied"/"occupation" share the root "occup-". So "ufton" is the artificial-language root for occupy; "el" is the leftover suffix for "-ied", and "alene" is the leftover suffix for "-ation".

  2. "Occupant" is built from the same "occupy" root, so its translation must contain "ufton". Scanning the options, only "uftonamint" contains "ufton" — "elbrifta", "elamint", and "briftalene" do not.

  3. Cross-check the leftover part "amint": in "briftamint" (militant), "brift" is the root for "milit-", so the leftover "amint" is the suffix for "-ant". Then "uftonamint" = ufton (occupy) + amint (-ant), which reads exactly as "occupant".

So "uftonamint" is the word that could mean "occupant".

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