Among the problems existing in entries in etymological dictionaries, one of the most serious is the absence or imprecision of a terminus a quo, that is, the oldest dating of the lexical item in the available documentation. Diachronic explanations often present large gaps, due to the lack of descriptions of the lexicon and its neological results in past synchronies. Furthermore, the distinction between graphic variation and lexical variation is not always clear in etymological dictionaries of the Portuguese language, which compromises not only the knowledge about the existence of a specific lexical item in a past synchrony, but also – even more seriously – the entire diachronic explanation that involves these data and the resulting theoretical conclusions. To describe part of this picture, backdating exercises are carried out on lexical items derived with the suffix -eiro, with a specific semantic field (“profession”), contrasting information from the Dicionário Houaiss and works by Jerónimo Cardoso (ca. 1508–1569).
