The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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masc. picciuoli ‘one’s pins’, and also umere (dial. or fig.) from late Latin
HUMERA beside umeri ‘shoulders’ from HUMERI ‘ditto’ (It. omeri). LUMBA for
LUMBI ‘loins’, found in glosses, gives OAbruzz. lomma, and Cat. lloma, Sp.
loma, Ptg. lomba ‘rising ground’. SlNŪS ‘bosoms’ is represented by -A forms in
Rum. sânuri ‘bosoms’ and Cat. sina ‘bosom’ beside si/se. Another word which
we may include here is the Latin fem. MEDULLA ‘marrow’, which partly became
regarded as a plural form and developed a new singular *MEDULLU, so It.
midollo (OIt. le midolla) ‘marrow’, midolla ‘pulp of fruit’, ‘the crumb of bread’
(Rum. has only măduvă), UEng. miguogl, LEng. mizguogl/maguogl, Surs.
maguol (crossed with MICA ‘crumb’) as opposed to Surs. misuola, Istr. madula,
Friul. medole, Fr. mol (Lorraine) and meole > moelle, Prov. mezol and mezolla,
(O)Cat. m(o)oll and m(e)olla, Sp. meollo, Salam. migollo and migolla, Gal.
miolo and miola, OPtg. meollo (now miolo) and moela (Beira miola), Sard.
meuddu/mueddu and muedda. In Italian this process has produced, apart from
the le orecchia seen above, other new collective plurals out of feminine
singulars: le minugia ‘guts’, found in Dante, le unghia ‘nails’, le mascella
‘jaws’, le guancia ‘cheeks’, le nocca ‘knuckles’, and presumably at one time
also le coscia, ‘thighs’, to have given rise to coscio ‘joint of meat’. Before we
leave the parts of the body we may also note that learned words have sometimes
been affected; we find pulsa ‘pulses’ in Dante, and pulsuri ‘ditto’ in Rumanian
(cf. other Latin 4th-declension nouns seen in §§4g, 12g,h), while VISCERA
‘viscera’, treated as a feminine singular, is widely found in a new plural form,
so Rum., It. viscere (in Dante, le viscera), Sp., Ptg., Sard. visceras (but Fr.
viscères is masc.).
Two more words with physical connections may conveniently be
considered here. The first is OVA ‘eggs’ (with the O shortened in late Latin),
which had a particular collective use with reference to fish eggs or spawn.
Here Rumanian has ouăle (from *OVAE ILLAE) in all senses, and so too It. le
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