The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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oxen in a day’/obra ‘work’ (no doubt influenced by the rhizotonic forms of
obrar, which are not diphthongized, perhaps following the model of sobrar),
arma, Ptg. obra, arma, Sard. opera/obera ‘a day’s work’, arma. Another
feminine form that puts in an early appearance in Latin is MENDA ‘fault’,
giving It., Surs., Eng. menda, OFr. mende, Prov. menda, Cat. dial. mena (as
against Log. mendu < MENDUM). A word that appears everywhere is PRIMA
VERA ‘spring’ (found in a late inscription), Rum. primăvară (and vară
‘summer’), It. primavera (ONeap. vera ‘summer’, cf. Sp. verano, Ptg. verăo),
Friul. primevere, Surs. primavera, Eng. prümavaira, OFr. primevoire, Prov.,
Cat., Sp., Ptg., Sard. primavera (this last said to be from Italian); we also find
Rum. iarnă ‘winter’, It. inverna ‘winter wind’, Ptg. inverna ‘hard winter’,
which may echo HIBERNA (the Rumanian certainly so). Latin VELA ‘sails’
(found as VELAS in late Latin), the plural of VELUM ‘sail’, ‘curtain’, ‘veil’,
became the word for a ‘sail’: It., Surs. vela, Eng. vaila, Fr. voile, Prov., Cat., Sp.
vela, OPtg. vea, later replaced by vela to avoid homonymy with veia < VENA
‘vein’; the singular remained everywhere as the word for ‘veil’, appearing also
in Rumanian as văl pl. văluri, with a suspicious l that we discussed earlier in
connection with VILLUS (but it may simply be a loanword from Italian, like
velă ‘sail’). VERBA ‘words’ as a singular has generally retained the collective
sense of ‘words’, ‘speech’ (cf. German Worte, as opposed to individual Wörter),
as in OIt. verba, Surs. viarva, OEng. verva, Prov., OCat. verba, OSp. vierba;
the Fr. verve originally meant ‘a form of expression’, then ‘empty chatter’,
‘whim’ and finally ‘vigour’, while modern Cat. (Maj.) berba means ‘joke’ and
Ptg. verba ‘an item on a list’, ‘an appropriation of money’. In this case, too, the
sing. VERBUM ‘word’ has left its reflexes as in It. verbo, Surs. vierv, OEng.
vierf, OSp. vierbo, OPtg. verbo, Sard. berbu, with pl. berbos ‘magic words’.
Another widespread word is FATA ‘the Fates’ (with a late abl. FATABUS
suggesting a change of declension, or at least of gender), which is used once by
Dante (artificially?) as a plural in its original meaning, but in general has
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