bagaje

Forms

bagaje m (plural bagajes)^[1] Older spellings include bagage, vagaje, bagaxe, vagaxe and bagax;^[2] Leonese, Navarrese and Aragonese have badaje.^[3] Asturian has badaxe, and the Aragonese Pyrenees baje.^[4][2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French bagage (“baggage, load”).^[4][5][6][1] The French word, first baguage (c. 1265), is a collective derivative of bagues (“belongings, clothes”), whose origin is uncertain.^[7][5] Corominas suggests it may be the same word as bague (“ring”), taken from Middle Dutch bagge and related to German biegen (“to bend”) and Bogen (“bow”): from “ring” the sense would have passed to “loop” and to bundles tied with one.^[5] The Academy derives the French word from Gothic *bagga (“bundle”).^[6] The DHLF finds a Germanic origin very doubtful: Old Norse baggi (“pack”) does not fit the area of the word, which points to the dialects of northern Italy and to Old Occitan baga (“bag”), and the Gothic form is only inferred.^[7]

García de Diego connects the Spanish word with Aragonese baga “rope for tying a load”.^[2] Older guesses derived it from vagando “wandering” (Covarrubias, 1611, who still thought the word French), from an Arabic word for “mule” (Autoridades, 1726) or from a Celtic word for “load” (the Academy, 1884–1899).^[8][9][10] Corriente rejects an Arabic origin.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest quotation in the Academy's historical dictionary is García Cereceda's account of Charles V's campaigns (1521): the Spanish servants see that the Italians are plundering el bagaje “the baggage train” and warn the squadron.^[3] The CDH has it from 1543, of the French marching out of a town con sus armas y bagajes “with their arms and baggage”;^[12] Corominas's first record is Laguna (1555).^[13][4][5]

Semantic evolution

The word first meant the train of people, goods and animals that followed an army, often in con armas y bagajes.^[3][13] Pedro de Valdivia used it in his letters from Chile (1545), and it appears in Yucatán in 1560.^[13][12] Covarrubias calls it a soldiers' word for everything an army needs.^[8] By 1843 the Academy also used it for the beast of burden, and in 1884 for the animal that towns had to supply to the army as a municipal charge, against payment: bagaje mayor a horse or mule, bagaje menor a donkey.^[14][10]

The sense “a person's luggage” is a recent Gallicism, from the mid-19th century, which the Chilean purist Román still rejected.^[4][15] In 1910 Garzón recorded both “luggage” and the figurative “set of moral or material resources for an end” in Argentina, noting that the latter was used in Spain too; today the figurative sense of a person's knowledge is general.^[16][6] Tagalog borrowed the word as bagahe.^[1]

Timeline

• 1521 – García Cereceda writes of the Italians plundering the bagaje.^[3]
• 1543 – the first records in the CDH, in accounts of the wars in France.^[13]
• 1545 – Pedro de Valdivia uses it in his letters from Chile.^[13]
• 1555 – Laguna, the DCECH's first record.^[4][5]
• 1591 – Percyvall glosses it as English “baggage” and Latin impedimenta exercitus.^[17]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from vagando but thinks it French.^[8]
• 1843 – the Academy defines it as a beast of burden and its load.^[14]
• 1884 – the Academy gives the army's baggage and the beasts supplied by the towns.^[10]
• 1910 – Garzón records “luggage” and the figurative sense in Argentina.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. luggage, baggage: the things one takes on a journey (equipaje).^[6][1]
2. The knowledge and information someone has: Llegó a la universidad con un buen bagaje literario.^[6][18][1]
3. The military baggage of an army or troop on the march.^[6]
4. (historical) An animal taken to carry soldiers or the army's baggage.^[6][10]
5. (historical) A municipal duty to provide transport for an army or troop on the march.^[6]
6. (Bolivia, usually in the plural) An allowance paid to an employee for travel.^[18]
7. (Ecuador) A simple, useless, clumsy person.^[19][20]

Related words

• French bagage
• Italian bagaglio

Usage notes

The phrase con armas y bagajes “with arms and baggage” is used of leaving or going over to another side with everything one has.^[1][21]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 873
3. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. bagaje
4. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 455
5. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. bagaje
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. bagaje
7. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. bagage
8. ^ a b c Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 265
9. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 530
10. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 129
11. ^ Corriente, Federico (1999), Diccionario de arabismos y voces afines en iberorromance, Madrid: Gredos, p. 487
12. ^ a b Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. bagaje
13. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. bagaje
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 86
15. ^ Román, Manuel Antonio (1901–1918), Diccionario de chilenismos y de otras voces y locuciones viciosas, 5 vols., Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de San José, p. 130
16. ^ a b Garzón, Tobías (1910), Diccionario argentino, Barcelona: Imprenta Elzeviriana de Borrás y Mestres, p. 45
17. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 75
18. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. bagaje
19. ^ Real Academia Española (2001), Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, p. s.v. bagaje
20. ^ Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org
21. ^ Echegaray, Eduardo de (1887–1889), Diccionario general etimológico de la lengua española, 5 vols., Madrid: José María Faquineto, p. 596