statunculum

Etymology
From. The formation is somewhat irregular: the ending -unculus was rarely used as a suffix, more often appearing when the diminutive suffix is added to a stem ending in /n/, and the gender of a Latin diminutive usually is the same as that of the base word, but in this case is changed from feminine to neuter.

Noun

 * : small statue, statuette

Usage notes
As Petronius places this word (in the plural) in the mouth of Trimalchio, a freedman, the form possibly did not belong to literary Latin. Adams (2013) suggests the neuter plural form in -a (also found unexpectedly on catīlla from ) could represent in this context a "collective" use "possibly designating weakly differentiated entities". Pliny uses the neuter plural with the same sense.