jail, cage, wooden house or wooden structure; or, eagle-house, associated with warfare (see Lockhart, Karttunen, and the attestations from Sahagún); the varying translations of this term are owing to the fact that cuauh- (or quauh-) can be the stem from combining either cuahuitl (wood) or cuauhtli (eagle) with calli (house, building, structure)
a sparseness of trees, trees that are spread thinly Sahagún, Bernardino de, Antonio Valeriano, Alonso Vegerano, Martín Jacobita, Pedro de San Buenaventura, Diego de Grado, Bonifacio Maximiliano, Mateo Severino, et al. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Florentine Codex), Ms. Mediceo Palatino 218–20, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, MiBACT, 1577. Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter, Alicia Maria Houtrouw, Kevin Terraciano, Jeanette Peterson, Diana Magaloni, and Lisa Sousa, bk. 11, fol. 116r. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/116r . Accessed 12 November 2025.