Noun: siglum
| Singular | siglum |
| Plural | sigla |
Sample Sentences
-
[H]e emerged onto a garden terrace where on the soft red sand one could make out the sigla of a summer day: the imprints of a dog's paws, the beaded tracks of a wagtail, the Dunlop stripe left by Tanya's bicycle, […] [1963, Vladimir Nabokov, chapter 2, in Michael Scammell, Vladimir Nabokov, transl., The Gift, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson […], →OCLC, page 86:]
Nouns inflected like siglum
meroplasmodium,
paleostriatum,
urodeum,
siphonium,
cladodium,
apogalacticum,
surrogatum,
siglum,
accubitum,
endoplasmic reticulum,
microsclerotium,
xystum,
archipterygium,
pleiochasium,
tripudium,
endosporium,
xenium,
separatum,
viscidium,
zoœcium, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. Learned borrowing from Late Latin siglum (“abbreviation”), possibly a contracted form of:
2. * sigillum (“figurine, statuette; seal”), from signum (“figure, statue; seal, signet; mark, sign”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *sek- (“to cut, sever; to cut off”) or *sekʷ- (“to follow”)) + -ulum (diminutive suffix); or
3. * singulum, a singular form of singulus (“apiece; every; single”, adjective), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *sem- (“one; together”).
4. The plural form sigla is a learned borrowing from Late Latin sigla.