The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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beside cuerno/corgno, prunello and masc. prunèu, dameisino and
damass-eto/-oto (also an old (d)avaissa, now abaisso, given in the DCELC s.v.
ciruela, showing the same accentuation as OFr. davoisne), limo and limouno
(for the ‘orange’ an old auranja is recorded, but the usual word now is the
masc. arange). For the ‘jujube’ the modern forms are jousibo, zuzubo and also
gijoulo, ginjourlo etc., these seemingly from Italian; however, some dialects
by confusion use the word guindoulo, which, like guindoul, guindo, guino,
guigno, corresponds to the Fr. guigne and is used variously to mean ‘sour
cherry’, ‘sweet cherry’ or ‘sloe’. There are also the same original Latin
feminines mandola/ame(n)la/amenda etc., avelana (also masc. avelan),
castanha, oliva; note also that the modern dialects have the characterized
feminine forms nogo/noio beside nose (old notz) ‘walnut’, as well as the
diminutives nouseto, nougueto, nousiho ‘little nut’, and that eusino,
corresponding to OIt. elcina, has the meaning ‘acorn’ as well as ‘holm-oak’.
Paralleling the Fr. coing, Provençal has the masc. coudoun(h), but there is also
a fem. coudou(g)no, which denotes a bigger fruit. Other masculines, outside
our scope, are aubricot/ambricot and damas (‘a kind of grape’; cf. pruno de
Damas for ‘damson’); there is also perus for ‘a kind of pear’, which
corresponds to WPied. prüs (Rohlfs, §382), and seemingly to OFriul. piruç.
h) Catalan follows Provençal, with the fruits mostly ending in -a, and
the trees formed with -ARIU (dialectal) or -ARIA (so pomer, pomera). Pom is
found in the sense of ‘apple’ as well as ‘pome’, ‘pommel’ etc., beside the
standard poma (both forms are found in the “Seville Bible”, No. 43 in
Russell-Gebbett’s anthology, and we also find poma maçana cited by Moll),
and Meyer-Lübke (Gram.) quotes mela; magrana, malagrana, mangrana
‘pomegranate’ seem to reflect an earlier *me(l)grana, like the Provençal forms
(note also the toponym Marmellar, DCELC, reflecting MELIMELU, cf. Sp. Ptg.;
melocotó is taken from Spanish). Catalan also follows Provençal in having the