Three consonants name the things that simply happen to us. The verb is the bare event; the nouns spread it out into a case, a string of happenings, and the whole idea of chance and the random. This is a ל״ה root: the third letter ה drops and stretches in the conjugations, so the verbs end in וֹת. One side note: a pi'el on the same letters means "to roof", and from that beam-and-roof image come a ceiling and an old word for a town. 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.
Two senses share three letters. Pa'al and nif'al carry "to happen / to chance upon"; the pi'el לְקָרוֹת is the homonymous "to roof", source of the ceiling and town words below. The hif'il, pu'al, huf'al and hitpa'el are not lexicalized 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.