La forma schiappa fra omonimie e paronimie

The word schiappa ‘big splinter of wood or stone’ (with the regional alternatives scappia, stiappa, schiampa) has a considerable number of meanings and a no less remarkable number of paronyms: schiappo, schiappa, schiappare, acchiappare (and, in ancient times, chiappare). All these similarities, which are to be considered at least partly random, in the past must have confused the speakers and, moreover, still put scholars to the test today. This essay aims to reorder, rather than to solve, some issues, focusing above all on the noun schiappa and the verb schiappare. The problem is basically given by a series of bases (the Germanic *slapa, the Latin scloppum ‘noise made with the mouth’, the Latin capulare ‘to take, to bind’ and (ex)capulare, perhaps the Latin *scalpare ‘to cut’, perhaps again the Latin scapula and then the Mediterranean form klappo– ‘slab of stone’), all of which potentially converge towards vulgar forms of the type chiap–, schiap–, schiop–; not to mention the complications caused by derivatives, by shifts of meaning, by the relationship of interchange between the Romance dialects and by the effects of popular etymologies.