The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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words’ (the DCVB thinks that Cat. llavia may have been taken from Spanish;
for the transference of meaning, cf. Engl. “none of your lip”).
h) We have noted earlier that in pre-classical Latin COLEUS/CULLEUS
‘bag’ had a plural CULLEA; this is found in Cato ap. Varr. meaning ‘large
measures of liquids’. The relation of these two forms to each other, and to
Greek koleós ‘sheath’, is uncertain, but at any rate COLEUS developed the
meaning of ‘scrotum’ and then ‘testicle’ (Cicero, Petronius, Martial), and this
continued into Romance, though rivalled by a new CULIO/COLEO (gen. -ONIS),
which appears in a gloss. The pl. CULLEA/*COLEA must evidently also have
been used for ‘testicles’, and has come into Romance mostly as a singular,
sometimes glossed as ‘scrotum’ and sometimes as ‘testicles’, thus evidently
denoting the whole unit of scrotum and contents. Here Rumania has sing. coiu,
pl. coaie ‘testicle(s)’, but elsewhere both forms are in the singular: OIt. coglio
‘testicle’, It. coglia ‘(scrotum with) testicles’, similarly OFr. co(u)il, co(u)ille,
with modern Fr. couilles ‘testicles’, Prov. colh ‘testicle’, colha ‘testicles’, Sard.
(Log.) kodza, (Camp.) kolla ‘testicles’; the Asturian coya! (see DCELC) also
corresponds formally (and cf. Sp. cojudo, corresponding to It. cogliuto, Fr.
couillu, Prov. colhut, Cat. collut, Ptg. colhudo, Sard. kodzudu, kolludu).
Going on to other parts of the trunk, we find that ILIA ‘flanks’ has
survived widely, mostly as a singular (or in the double plural form) meaning
‘groin’ or, occasionally, ‘flanks’: Rum. iie, Corsican iglia, Cerignola (N. Apul.)
igghiə, Apul. iddzə (and, with the -ORA ending, Bari igghiərə, Salento ijure),
Surs. eglias, UEng. iglias, OFr. illes (now iles), Prov. ilha. (Elsewhere we only
find derivatives, such as Cat. ilhada, Sp. ijada, Ptg. ilhal, Log. iddzare, Camp.
illari.) A similar pair of words is BOTULA, BOTELLA ‘sausages’, ‘small
intestines’, both attested in glosses. The former has given the collectives Breg.
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