sēcula

Meaning

1. a sickle
   Falces a farre littera commutata; hae in Campania seculae a secando; a quadam similitudine harum aliae, ut quod apertum unde, falces fenariae et arboriae et, quod non apertum unde, falces lumaria 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.116 BCE – 27 BCE, Marcus Terentius Varro, De Lingua Latina 5.137

Declension

Origins

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: 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. Grandgent 1907 views it instead as a phonetic variant of sīcula.