serqua

Forms

serqua f (plural serque)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian seriqua, Old Italian sarqua and Old Italian serériqua.^[2][1] Pisan has sèrquia beside sèrqua.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin siliqua (“pod”), a word that in Latin already named a unit of measure.^[4][5][6][1] In Late Latin it was a fractional unit of weight in a system counted by twelves, and also a small coin worth a twenty-fourth of the solidus.^[7][3][8] The Italian word is the popular outcome, beside the learned siliqua.^[9][6]

Devoto explains the form by the regular loss of the vowel after the stress in a word stressed on the third syllable from the end, and by a Roman or western Tuscan tradition that turns the group /lk/ into /rk/.^[10] Diez had left the word unexplained, and Rönsch first traced it to siliqua.^[11] Pieri derived Sienese scerquo and scerco, a large quantity of water or blood, from the same Latin word.^[11][3]

The origin of Latin siliqua is uncertain.^[4][7][12] It is often connected with Latin silex (“flint”), but de Vaan prefers a link with siligō (“winter wheat”), for the unusual suffix and the closer meaning, and the word is probably from a substrate language.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

A San Gimignano text of 1276 has seriqua and a Florentine one of 1279 has serqua, both as a measure of grain;^[4] DELI corrects the sense “dozen” that the edition of the 1279 text gave.^[4] GDLI also records an old sense “dry measure for grain”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Giovanni Villani's chronicle counts bread by the serqua: the city baked loaves of six ounces, about nine serque to the staio of flour.^[2][13] From the 14th century on the word is the dozen of eggs, pears, nuts or loaves, the goods priced twelve at a time, as in Sacchetti, Davanzati and Galileo.^[2][13][8] A 19th-century Florentine dictionary noted that serqua was said of eggs, pears and the like, and dozzina of other things.^[13]

The sense “a great number or quantity” is recorded from 1870, in Fanfani.^[4] In it the word is often ironic or scornful, as una serqua di bugie (a whole string of lies).^[2][5] GDLI also records serqua for a string of garlic bulbs, and the phrase a serque “in plenty”.^[2] Today the word is popular or regional and mostly used of eggs.^[5][6][14]

Timeline

• 1276 – Seriqua, a measure of grain, appears in a San Gimignano text.^[4]
• 1279 – Serqua appears in a Florentine text.^[4]
• 1870 – Fanfani records the sense “great number or quantity”.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. (popular) A dozen, especially of goods priced by twelves: comprò una serqua d’uova al mercato.^{[5][15][14][6]}
2. (by extension) A great quantity, a string of things of one kind: una serqua di guai.^[5][9][16]
3. (obsolete) A dry measure for grain.^[2][4]

Word family

• serquettina

Related words

• dozzina
• siliqua

Usage notes

Serqua is limited to a few set expressions, above all una serqua d’uova.^[6] Elsewhere Italian says dozzina.^[6][13]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 18, 744
3. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 3462
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
5. ^ a b c d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
6. ^ a b c d e f Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
7. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ a b Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti
9. ^ a b Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
10. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
11. ^ a b Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
12. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ a b c d Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
14. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
15. ^ Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
16. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli