Peter Boyd-Bowman's
Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993

In 1967 Professor Boyd-Bowman began collecting material for the Léxico hispanoamericano (LHA), and a preliminary version of the sixteenth-century material was published in 1971. The amount of material increased to such an extent, however, that it became clear that its publication on paper would not be a viable undertaking.

In 1982 the Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies began to publish the LHA, century by century, in the form of microfiches. Each collection of microfiches was accompanied by an introduction written by Professor Boyd-Bowman. Many users and reviewers pointed out, however, that among other inconveniences of the microfiche edition was the fact that searching for individual forms was time-consuming and browsing difficult, and the usefulness of the LHA would be considerably increased if it were possible to combine the five individual century collections into a single corpus. By 1994, the editors realized that this might be feasible and approached the National Endowment for the Humanities in search of support for a projected conversion of the LHA to a CD-supported database with appropriate software incorporated.

In 2003 the Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies published the CD-ROM version of the LHA. Unfortunately, a few years after its appearance, changes made in the Windows operating system and in the database program made the program unexecutable.

Finally, in 2015, having secured funding from the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Ivy Corfis (project director), Fernando Tejedo-Herrero (editorial assistant), Pablo Ancos (editorial assistant), and Philip Tibbetts (technical development) published the online version of the LHA.

Access the LHA

It is the hope of the editors that this latest version of the LHA will make the wealth of information documenting the use of Spanish in the Americas over five centuries more widely known and more accessible.

Bibliography

  • Boyd-Bowman, Peter. 1971. Léxico hispanoamericano del siglo XVI. London: Tamesis.
    • Boyd-Bowman, Peter. 1982. Léxico hispanoamericano del siglo XVIII. Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies.
    • Boyd-Bowman, Peter. 1983. Léxico hispanoamericano del siglo XVII. Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies.
    • Boyd-Bowman, Peter. 1984. Léxico hispanoamericano del siglo XIX. Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies.
    • Boyd-Bowman, Peter. 1987. Léxico hispanoamericano del siglo XVI. Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies.
    • Boyd-Bowman, Peter. 1994. Léxico hispanoamericano del siglo XX. Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies.
    • Boyd-Bowman, Peter. 2003. Léxico hispanoamericano 1493-1993. Eds. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti. CD-ROM. New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies.