Three consonants carry one idea: eating. The basic verb is le'ekhol, to eat; from there the same letters branch into the food itself (okhel), the dish you cook (ma'akhal), the act of eating (akhila), and even the corner shop where you buy it (makolet). Cause someone else to eat and you get leha'akhil, to feed. None of these are learned one by one. They are the same three letters seen from different angles. Every word here is verified against pealim, niqqud included.
The same root runs through the verb system. Each binyan is a voice: it bends the one idea into active, passive, causative or reciprocal. Tap to hear.
The pa'al "to eat" is among the most irregular verbs in Hebrew because the first root letter is א (aleph). The pi'el here drifts away from the table: "to eat away" in the sense of corroding or eroding, the way rust consumes metal. The passive huf'al ("to be fed") and the reflexive hitpa'el are not lexicalized for this root, so Hebrew leans on nif'al for "to be eaten".
Same root letters, different noun moulds (mishkalim). The mould tells you the function: who does it, the act of doing it, or the thing produced.
Strip the prefixes, suffixes and vowels. Three consonants remain, and the meaning lives there.