favilla

Borrowed from Latin favilla.

favilla f (plural faville)

1. spark
2. glimmer

• Favalli, fallavi, falliva

Likely from Proto-Indo-European *dʰewh₂- (“smoke”); some have tried to connect it to *dʰegʷʰ- (“to burn”), but its descendants show no trace of a labiovelar.^[1]

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /faˈu̯il.la/, [fäˈu̯ɪlːʲä]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /faˈvil.la/, [fäˈvilːä]

favilla f (genitive favillae); first declension

1. ember, cinder, glowing ash
   • From the Dies irae sequence (stanza 18) of the Catholic Requiem mass:

     Lacrimosa dies illa,
     Qua resurget ex favilla,
     Iudicandus homo reus.
     Huic ergo parce, Deus.

     Tearful [will be] that day,
     on which from the glowing embers will arise
     the guilty man who is to be judged.
     Then spare him, O God.

First-declension noun.

• Old Galician-Portuguese:
  • Galician: feila
  • ⇒ Galician: foula (crossed with faluppa)
• Sicilian: faviḍḍa, faiḍḍa
  • → Italian: Failla
• → Italian: favilla

• “favilla”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “favilla”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• favilla in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.