bledo

Forms

bledo m (plural bledos)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin blitum (“blite, amaranth”), which is from Ancient Greek βλίτον (blíton).^[2][3][4][1] The same Latin word is Portuguese bredo, Catalan blet, Occitan blet and French blette.^[5][6] The Galician form is beldro, which Corominas thinks may come from the diminutive blitulum, perhaps influenced by the words for purslane and for the winnowing fork.^[2]

Plautus already uses the Latin word, and Latin also had the adjective bliteus (“tasteless, foolish”).^[7][8] Pliny calls the plant sluggish and without flavour.^[7] The Greek word is first found in the Hippocratic writings.^[8][9] Beekes finds its origin unknown, and rejects a link with μύλη (múlē, “mill”).^[8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record in the Academy's corpus is the Spanish translation of Palladius by Ferrer Sayol (1380–1385), among garden plants: de bledos, de puerros.^[10] DEMel lists an earlier bledos in the Old Spanish translation of Ibn Wāfid's treatise on agriculture (c. 1300).^[11] Corominas's first records are the Refranes que dizen las viejas of the mid-15th century and Nebrija.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

Already about 1406 Villasandino used the limp plant in a comparison: mas floxo que bledo “limper than a blite”.^[12] Autoridades (1726) describes it as a kind of wild cress, white or red, eaten stewed, and explains the name from a Greek word for what has no taste; it quotes Acosta on an idol of the Indies made of a dough of bledos and maize, and records the phrase no dársele un bledo for utter contempt.^[13] In the Americas the seed of the native amaranths is recorded from Mexico in 1540.^[14]

The phrase passed into the general language: the 1884 dictionary lists no dársele a uno un bledo, and the DLE gives importar un bledo and no valer un bledo, with the noun alone meaning “a thing of no value”.^[15][4] Bénaben compares me importa un pepino, built the same way.^[16] In Central America bledo names a wild amaranth (Amaranthus hybridus).^[17]

Timeline

• c. 1300 – bledos in the Spanish version of Ibn Wāfid's agriculture.^[11]
• 1380–1385 – Ferrer Sayol's Libro de Palladio.^[10]
• c. 1406 – Villasandino: mas floxo que bledo.^[12]
• mid-15th century – the Refranes que dizen las viejas.^[2]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija: bledo, yerva conocida, Latin blitum.^[18]
• 1540 – first record in the Americas, in Mexico: semilla de bledos.^[14]
• 1726 – Autoridades records no dársele un bledo.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. blite, pigweed: an annual plant with creeping stems, dark green triangular leaves and tiny red flowers in clusters; the name is used for several species of Amaranthus and Chenopodium.^[4][19][1]
2. (figurative) A thing of little or no value, in phrases such as importar un bledo and no valer un bledo: Sus quejas me importan un bledo.^[4][19][1]

Related words

• Latin blitum
• Catalan blet

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 600
3. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. bledo
4. ^ a b c d 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. bledo
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 1173
6. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 1068
7. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. bledo
11. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. bledo
12. ^ a b Alonso Pedraz, Martín (1986), Diccionario medieval español: desde las Glosas Emilianenses y Silenses (s. X) hasta el siglo XV, 2 vols., Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, p. 530
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 1, 622
14. ^ 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. bledo
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 154
16. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. bledo
17. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. bledo
18. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 304
19. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. bledo