The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

158
Cat. fimbria is apparently a popular outcome of the original Latin form.
MALANDRIA ‘malanders’ has given It. malandr(i)a, Fr. malandre, Occ.
malandro. Another word which was used as a neuter by Cato is URCEU
‘pitcher’, and here we have OIt. orcia beside the current orcio, OFr. orce, Prov.
orsa, Cat. orça, Sp. orza and also old orço (there is also an old orçuela from
URCEOLU, to which compare the Rum. neuter urcior, pl. urcioare, OCat. orçor;
a similar orzuelo ‘rabbit-trap’, ‘bird-trap’, corresponding to Ptg. ichó (masc.
and fem.), comes from *USTIOLU, ‘little door’ and so is parallel to Rum. neuter
uşor/uşcior/uscior, It. usciolo, Eng. uschöl, OFr. uisole, Prov. u(i)ssol). Finally
I will include here two words which both have masculine and feminine forms
in Romance, although it is not clear to me whether the latter go back to a neuter
plural; the Latin forms postulated are given as neuters — *CAVANEUM and
*CAPACEUM, both for types of ‘basket’. Here we have for the first the It.
cavagno and cavagna, the latter used in the north and south, V. Breg. cavagn,
cavagna, UEng. chavagn, chavagna, LEng. chavogn, chavogna (the latter
denoting a bigger object), Occ. cavan/cavanh and cavagno, and a Ptg. cabano
(also cavanejo) quoted by Michaelis; the second gives LEng. champatsch, Prov.
cabas, cabassa, said to be the source of the similar north Italian forms and the
cabas, cabasse found in northern French, Cat. cabàs, cabassa (larger) and Ptg.
cabaz, while Spanish has capazo, capaza (perhaps with p from CAPPA) and also
capacho (found in Portuguese as well), capacha, evidently of Mozarabic
origin.
d) A certain number of words of this type are of Greek origin, some of
them coming via a popular route, others not. Firstly, from SCHIDIA ‘splinter’
come Rum. ştează ‘little sticks with which to keep the meshes of a net apart’, It.
scheggia ‘splinter’ and Friul. scleze (have these come from *SCHLIDIA ?); then
there is Fr. esquille ‘a bone splinter’, a learned borrowing which then passed
into Occitanian as esquirla, esquiho, and from this have come Sp. esquirla, Ptg.
158