secula

secula

1. plural of seculum

• Caelus, Clause, clause

From secō (“to cut, cleave”) +‎ -ula. Mentioned by Varro as a Campanian synonym of falx. The long ē is reconstructed based on the quality of the vowel in Italian segolo^[1]: along with tēgula and rēgula, it may display a lengthened grade of the Proto-Indo-European root, although the reason for vowel lengthening in this context is not well understood.^[2] Grandgent 1907 views it instead as a phonetic variant of sīcula.^[3]

sēcula f (genitive sēculae); first declension

1. (hapax)^[4] a sickle
   • 116 BCE – 27 BCE, Marcus Terentius Varro, De Lingua Latina 5.137:

     Falces a farre littera commutata; hae in Campania seculae a secando; a quadam similitudine harum aliae, ut quod apertum unde, falces fenariae et arbor<ar>iae et, quod non apertum unde, falces lumaria<e> et sirpiculae.

     • 1938 translation by Roland G. Kent

       Falces ‘sickles,’ from far ‘emmer,’ with the change of a letter; in Campania, these are called seculae, from secare ‘to cut’; from a certain likeness to these are named others, the falces fenariae ‘hay scythes’ and arborariae ‘tree pruning-hooks,’ of obvious origin, and falces lumariae and sirpiculae, whose source is obscure.

First-declension noun.

• falx
• sicilis

• Friulian: sesule
• Italian: segolo^[5]
• → Proto-West Germanic: *sikilu (see there for further descendants)

• “secula”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• secula in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• secula in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• De Vaan, Michiel (2008) “secō”, in Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 551

From saeclum.

sēcula

1. nominative/accusative/vocative plural of sēculum