Runcina
ῥυκάνη
Runcina (ῥυκάνη), a plane (Tertull. Apol. 12; Plin. Nat. 16.225), is delineated among joiners' tools (Instrumen. Fabr. Tignar.) in the woodcut at p. 243. Another example of similar form, but with the wooden box also shown, may be seen in Blümner: in both these we see two holes for the passage of the shavings, one on each side of the handle, instead of one, as in modern planes. The Latin and Greek names for this instrument gave origin to the corresponding transitive verbs runcino and ῥυκανάω, meaning to plane.
(Varro, L. L. 5.96; Poll. 10.146; Anth. Pal. 6.204; Blümner, Technol. 2.227.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.