ciaula
Sicilian
Alternative forms
- ciàvula (dieretic)
- ciàula (redundant diacritic)
Etymology
Unknown. Compare Neapolitan ciàula, Tarantino ciola, Friulian çore, Romanian cioară, Albanian sorrë.
Pasqualino suggests cià, onomatopoeia imitating the bird's sound, + -ula (diminutive suffix), and compares it to the similarly formed Latin grāculus (“jackdaw”).[1]
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈʃaw.la/, [ˈʃaw.la], [ˈʃa.ʊ.la], [ˈʃa.vʊ.la]
- Hyphenation: ciàu‧la
Noun
ciaula f (plural ciauli)
- Various black cawing birds:
- 1785 – 1787, Giovanni Meli, Don Chisciotti e Sanciu Panza 7.71:
- crow (Corvus corone)
- magpie (Pica pica)
- Synonym: carcarazza
- jackdaw (Coloeus monedula)
- (figuratively) chatterbox (talkative person)
Descendants
- → Maltese: ċawl
References
- Traina, Antonino (1868) “ciaula”, in Nuovo vocabolario Siciliano-Italiano [New Sicilian-Italian vocabulary] (in Italian), Liber Liber, published 2020, page 845
- “ciaula”, in Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, volume 3 cert–dag, UTET, 1964, page 115c