ciaula

Sicilian

na ciaula (sense 1.1) — a crow

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”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈʃaw.la/, [ˈʃaw.la], [ˈʃa.ʊ.la], [ˈʃa.vʊ.la]
• Hyphenation: ciàu‧la

Noun

ciaula f (plural ciauli)

1. Various black cawing birds:
   • 1785 – 1787, Giovanni Meli, Don Chisciotti e Sanciu Panza 7.71:

     ’Avi […] li capiddi a culuri di li ciauli […].

     She has hair of the colour of crows.

   2. crow (Corvus corone)
   3. magpie (Pica pica)

      Synonym: carcarazza

   4. jackdaw (Coloeus monedula)
2. (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