# secula
## English
### Noun

secula
* plural of seculum

### Anagrams

* Caelus, Clause, clause

## Latin
### Etymology 1

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.

#### Noun

sēcula f (genitive sēculae); first declension
* (hapax) 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. KentFalces ‘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.

##### Declension

First-declension noun.
| Case | Singular | Plural |
| Nominative | sēcula | sēculae |
| Genitive | sēculae | sēculārum |
| Dative | sēculae | sēculīs |
| Accusative | sēculam | sēculās |
| Ablative | sēculā | sēculīs |
| Vocative | sēcula | sēculae |

##### Synonyms

* falx
* sicilis

##### Descendants

* Friulian: sesule
* Italian: segolo
* → Proto-West Germanic: *sikilu (see there for further descendants)

#### References

* ↑ Ernout, Alfred, Meillet, Antoine (1985) “secula”, in Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine: histoire des mots‎ (in French), 4th edition, with additions and corrections of Jacques André, Paris: Klincksieck, published 2001, page 607
* ↑ Schrijver, Peter C. H. (1991) The reflexes of the Proto-Indo-European laryngeals in Latin (Leiden studies in Indo-European; 2), Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi, →ISBN, page 127
* ↑ Grandgent, C. H. (1907) An Introduction to Vulgar Latin, page 84
* ↑ Nielsen, Benedicte (1998) Latinske nomina instrumenti dannet med *-lo-, *-slo- og *-tlo-. Om det indbyrdes slægtskab mellem tre indoeuropæiske nominalsuffikser. (Master's thesis)‎, pages 78-79
* ↑ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1911) “7771. sēcula”, in Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (in German), page 584

#### Further reading

* “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

### Etymology 2

From saeclum.

#### Noun

sēcula
* nominative/accusative/vocative plural of sēculum