Eighty-one is 'e sciure, the flowers. The Neapolitan turns the Italian fi- into sci-, so fiori becomes sciure and fiume becomes sciume. It is one of the sound changes that makes written dialect hardest for Italian speakers.
The figure is plural: flowers, a bunch of them, not a single bloom.
- 81
- 'E sciure
- the flowers
- Row 81–90 of the tabellone
Where the figure comes from
No recorded reason for the pairing.
Other things filed on 81
In Neapolitan life
Eighty-one closes the line Naples played out of habit. Matilde Serao named it in 1884: «il terno famoso, cinque, ventotto e ottantuno». Five, twenty-eight, eighty-one. Her point in printing it was that families who could not afford bread staked those three numbers every Saturday because tradition demanded it, and that the state could budget on the habit. She was writing against the lottery, not for it.
81 in the smorfia — frequently asked
It is the last number of the terno — five, twenty-eight, eighty-one — that Serao recorded nineteenth-century Naples playing every week out of custom.
Neapolitan turns fi- into sci-. It is regular; the same rule gives sciume for fiume, a river.