The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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‘kneading-trough’, in the same way as Neap. semmoja (Wart.) means a ‘hub’.
In this connection there is a word of almost pan-Romance distribution, but of
uncertain origin, though it looks as if it has some connection with MODIA, and
that is the word for a ‘hopper’ in a mill, which seems to be a combination of
TRIMODIA ‘a measure of 3 modia’ and TREME-; the forms are It. tramoggia, Eng.
tramozza, Surs. termosa, OFr. tremuie (now trémie), Prov.
tremueja/tremueia/tremoia, Cat., Arag. tremuja, Sp. dial. tramoya, Gal.
tremoya, Ptg. tremonha (tramoia is from Spanish in the standard Sp. sense of
‘trick’), Sard. termoia.
From late Latin SEXTARIA ‘pints’ we get It. staia, first as the plural of
staio, meaning ‘bushel(ful)s’, and then as a singular, una staia ‘one bushelful’;
besides this there is the form staiora, found first in Lombard Latin as STARIORA,
which now has a new sing. staióro, with change of accent (cf. pugnóro from
pugnora), and so pl. staióra, meaning ‘the amount of land that can be sown
with a bushel of seed’. In this case Milanese also has doa stera, and šteira is
found in Ticino. In Rhaeto-Romance the corresponding forms are the
collectives Eng. dua (traia) stêra, Surs. dua (trei) stera. In Old French there are
numerous examples of sestiere used invariably, as well as with an added -s; for
Provençal Wartburg quotes an old form sestaria (Latinized?), while the modern
sestieiro points to an earlier sestie(i)ra. (Gascon and Catalan have masc. sester,
like Fr. setier.) Similarly It. sacco makes a pl. due sacca/sacche/saccuri
(Calab.) in the sense of ‘sackfuls’ as against sacchi for the ‘sacks’ themselves
(but note that sacca means ‘sacks’ in Dante, Par., 22:78), where standard
Rumanian seems to be similar, as Schönkron’s dictionary has the masc. pl. saci
in one half, while labelling sac “n.” in the other, with backing from
Meyer-Lübke, who gives the forms sace/sacuri; here note that there is also an
It. fem. sing. sacca ‘sack’, ‘bag’, paralleled by Fr.-Prov. sachi, Prov., Cat., Sp.,