I am interested in the etymology of the Romanian verb a cicăli (to make reproaches repeatedly, to nag), which is reported of unknown origin.
That is obviously wrong, given the existence of the Italian cicalare. — Infinitive form of Romanian verbs doesn't end in -re, but the language uses verb+re to create nouns: e.g., cicălire=the action of cicăli (also: a putea=”to be able to”, putere=power, etc)—.
The third meaning of cicalare mentioned at the Wiktionary link above (transitive, rare: to say insistently) is exactly the Romanian meaning.
It doesn't seem the kind of word that one would expect as an Italian neologism in Romanian, where it appears as a popular (rural) word, not one of high culture anyway. (As such, it can be found in the first big collection of folk tales gathered and published by Ispirescu in 1862.)
What intrigues me is that cicalare comes from cicala, "cicada", an insect that is absent and traditionally unknown in Romania (the word "cicadă" is a rather recent neologism).
Cicăli is either a very old word coming from late Latin, or a neologism that followed an obscure path into the popular speech.
Romanian also has the rarely used noun cicală ("nagging, quarrelsome person"), for which an Italian connection is mentioned —but I don't really understand whether the connection is suggesting a common origin or a borrowing. Anyway, the verb and the noun have to be considered together, along with other derivate forms (cicălitor, adjective).
I personally think this is an old word no matter the absence of cicadas in Romania.
In order for it to be a borrowing, the Italian form has to have or to have had in the past a rather central position in the language, to have been largely used and even to have been largely present in literary works (because direct contact between the speakers of the two languages was absent before the 19th century, when the Romanian word already appears well established). Was that the case? Or is it a rather marginal, colloquial and/or rare word, like cicăli/cicălire?