7. A historical word that does not seem historical

There are cases where, within the academic lexicographic tradition, a word is typically labelled as exclusive to Latin America, or some of its territories. Frequently, it is not specified whether the term in question is historical. Given this context, in most cases, this lexicographic tradition continues to treat some words as simply being in common usage. In turn, mutatis mutandis, the diatopic information that appears in the academic lexicographic tradition is largely the Spanish-American one, rather than the Iberian one. This constitutes a critical space requiring further work and investigation in the field of historical lexicology.

7.1. This occurs in the case of belduque, defined as ‘cuchillo grande de hoja puntiaguda’ (‘a large, pointed knife’) (DLE). Román, in his Diccionario de chilenismos y de otras voces y locuciones viciosas, suggests the following definition:

Belduque, m. Cierto cuchillo de hoja puntiaguda y mango de madera y de una sola pieza, que estuvo aquí muy en uso treinta años atrás. Llamábase también cuchillo de belduque o cuchillo belduque, adjetivando esta última voz. Créela Cuervo venida de España y derivada de Balduque, que era como pronunciaban los españoles del siglo XVI el nombre de Bois-le-Duc, ciudad de Holanda, célebre en las guerras de los Países Bajos y en la cual hasta hoy florecen las fábricas de cuchillos. Tanto en Colombia como en Chile se ha dicho también balduque, lo que se acerca más a la casi cierta etimología. Entre otros usos, sirvió este cuchillo para matar y descuartizar reses: en este caso podría reemplazarse por el castizo jifero. (1901-1908)

(Belduque, m. A certain knife with a pointed blade and a wooden handle, in one piece, which was very much in use here thirty years ago. It was also called cuchillo de belduque or cuchillo belduque, this last word adjectivised. Cuervo believes it came from Spain and derived from Balduque, which was how the Spaniards of the 16th century pronounced the name of Bois-le-Duc, a city in Holland, famous in the wars in the Netherlands and for knife factories that still exist today. In both Colombia and Chile, balduque has also been used, which is closer to Cuervo’s etymology. Among other uses, this knife was utilised to kill and butcher cattle: in this case it could be replaced by the traditional jifero. (1901-1908))

7.2. The first cases of this word are found practically all across Latin America from an early stage. Once again, the Léxico hispanoamericano (LHA) helped us to corroborate the first dates: 1549 for Mexico (Protocolos de Puebla de los Ángeles, Boyd Bowman); 1559 for Bolivia (Historia de la villa imperial de Potosí, Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela, Boyd Bowman); 1581 for Guatemala (Archivo documental centroamericano, Boyd Bowman); 1626 for Chile (Historia del tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición en Chile, Medina, Boyd Bowman); and 1638 for Colombia (Juan Rodríguez Freyle, CORDE), all like cuchillo de belduque.

7.3. The word, as reported by Román, was usual in Chile until the 19th century. This is corroborated by Gormaz (1860), who amends berduque to balduque. Cuervo, from the first edition of his Apuntaciones, proposes the etymon of the word (1867-1872: §732) and confirms it in subsequent editions. Likewise, Cuervo gives an account of the extension of the word in Latin America: “from Mexico to Chile” (1907: §656). We found that Rodríguez (1875) for Chile, Uribe (1887) for Colombia, and Echeverría y Reyes (1900) for Chile are the only authors who cited the term in the Hispanic American lexicographic tradition. García Icazbalceta (1899), for Mexico, mentions fact that the word has fallen out of standard usage and that “today only the common people use this word.”