Three consonants carry one idea: labour. The same root that gives you to work also gives you the worker's task, the slave, the laboratory, and even the word for a fact. The thread is service: a job done, a thing worked on, a person bound to work. Pour ע־ב־ד into a verb mould and you act; pour it into a noun mould and you get the work, the workplace, or the worker. 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.
Notice the voice ladder: pa'al is plain work, pi'el is intensive work done on something (processing raw material), and hif'il is causative work, making someone else work. The passive partners nif'al, pu'al and huf'al exist in the system but are not lexicalized as everyday verbs for this root.
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.