[QUOTE=fernando;282829]Thank you for your input, Jim. My asking if this thing is a machete was more to define whether its form fitted in the tradionally machete known way and not the ethimology of the term; which, not wishing (or afford) to be academic, its origin is not so solid. Look how the various Spanish sources deal with the term in its acceptances.
The origin of the term machete is unknown, but it is mostly believed that it is a diminutive of macho. Another possibility is that it comes from the term machaera and this one in turn from the Greek μάχαιρα, which the Romans used to describe the Iberian falcata with similar characteristics.
This word is etymologically composed of the Latin «marcŭlus» small martillo or male and the suffix «ete» which indicates diminutive with affective expressions and at the same time as derogatory.
Although its name is Spanish, possibly derived from 'macho', its ancestors are located at the dawn of history. The investigators are inclined to label the falchion as its most dangerous parent, whose appearance is located in Europe in the XI century.
And last but not least, although for the fun of it, the machete term in Spanish school lexicon, is a 'cheat sheet' implement 
.[/QUOTE
The point I was making is that the term machete, and as I described its tortured etymology are of little help in the endless struggle to classify weapon examples in certain pigeon holes. The Spanish colonial espada ancha for example, was never colloquially called that, it was referred to as a MACHETE. The term never arise until a misunderstanding by arms writers in the 1970s. In shipboard records and inventories of 17th centuries, short heavy bladed swords (with open hilts) were sometimes called machetes, sometimes cutlasses.
It pretty much depended on who was using it, when, where and what for. If it was chopping wood or brush it was a machete, when used as a weapon, a sword or whatever.