7.4. The term belduque was incorporated in DRAE (1925) with geographic labels (Colombia, Chile, and Mexico) precisely because it had appeared in some lexicographical repertoires from these countries. However, we have found that most of such authors indicate this word as out of use or as restricted to certain spaces. For example, from Chile, Yrarrázabal (1945) proposes the elimination of the term belduque from the DRAE, claiming that it is not used in his country, and Morales Pettorino (1984) labels it as unusual. The maintenance of diatopic labels is irregular within more contemporary lexicographical tradition. For example, Malaret, in the third edition of his dictionary (1946), discards Colombia and leaves only Mexico and Chile.

7.5. The 1956 edition of DRAE discards the Chile label. Its 1992 edition, Mexico is also put aside but reappears in the 2001 edition. The Dictionary of Americanisms (DA) gives an account of the word for Mexico and Colombia but regards both as being obsolete.

7.6. One last piece of information that we want to present and that invites us to continue investigating the destination and uses of belduque is what we found in Fernández (1900). He reports that a semantic transition occurred in Chile towards “débil, enclenque, apocado” (‘feeble, sickly, timid’) citing the authority of the writer Daniel Barros Grez (a 19th-century author of the costumbrista movement, one of the founders of Chile’s dramaturgy). This transition did not prosper, as it has not reappeared in any Chilean lexicographical repertoire and we have not found it in our search. This proves that a word, in this case, historical or unusual, requires constant philological research, especially when has a rather unique diachronic typology. As for now, it is relevant to emphasize that Léxico hispanoamericano (LHA), an online resource, has been greatly helpful to trace this diachrony.

8. An indigenous term in use in Chile

Another instance in which the Léxico hispanoamericano (LHA) has been of great help in determining the diatopic distribution of a lexical item is the case of the construction al apa (‘piggyback’). It can exemplify the function of the LHA, as an excellent source of the lexical wealth of non-Hispanic origin that constitutes and characterises Latin American Spanish. This particular case is an example of indigenous words that have passed into the Spanish language.

8.1. In the case of the word apa, Lafone Quevedo, in his Tesoro de Catamarqueñismos (1927 [1898]), comments that it comes from apa, which in Quechua means to carry and is the expression that children say to their wet nurses: apa, “take me or bring me ”. In Chile, Román (1901-1908) adds that it is used to mean “piggyback”, among all kinds of people, in the adverbial phrase al apa.

8.2. Interestingly, al apa is an extensively used expression of Quechua origin that continues to be in widespread use in Chile. In Argentina, other than Lafone Quevedo’s account, the word has no record whatsoever. In Chile, within the lexicographic tradition of Chilean dictionaries, it is lemmatised for the first time in Rodríguez (1875), followed by Ortúzar (1893), Echeverría y Reyes (1900), Román (1901-1908) and Medina (1928). Lenz, in his Diccionario etimológico de las voces chilenas derivadas de las lenguas indígenas americanas (1979 [1904-1910]), indicates that the term is used frequently in Santiago.