ahuacatl. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

ahuacatl.

Principal English Translation:

the avocado fruit; from the avocado tree (ahuacuahuitl); the tlacazolahuacatl is another variety, with larger avocados, and nursing mothers avoid it; the quilahuacatl is green and small, the choice of the nobility
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. 122r. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/122r?spTexts=&nhTexts= . Accessed 13 November 2025.

Orthographic Variants:

avacatl, auacatl, āhuacatl, aoacatl

IPAspelling:

ɑːwɑkɑtɬ

Alonso de Molina:

auacatl. fruta conocida, o el compañon.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 9r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

ĀHUACA-TL avocado; testicle / fruta conocida, o el campañón (M), ahuacate, fruta conocida (R)
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 7.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:

āhuaca-tl

Attestations from sources in English:

ahuacatl = avocado
James Lockhart, Nahuatl as Written: Lessons in Older Written Nahuatl, with Copious Examples and Texts (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Studies, 2001), 210.

yn avacatl yancuican necih etetl cacahoatl ypatihv yn ihquac vel onezqui avacatl quinamiquiz in cacavatl = An avocado newly picked is worth 3 cacao beans; when an avocado is fully ripe it will be equivalent to one cacao bean (Tlaxcala, 1545)
Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), Doc. 34, 210–211.

ompa tetla mani huerta peras oncan mani yhuan ahuacatl higos = there at Tetla is an orchard, where there are pears and avocados and figs (Coyoacan, 1622)
Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), Doc. 4, 66–67.

Attestations from sources in Spanish:

ypan mani ahuacaquahuitl macuili çan ce yn tla yaqui niquinnomaquilia yn nopilhuatzintzin = en ella están parados cinco árboles de aguacate, [mando] que sólo tomen [un árbol] cada uno de mis hijos (Cuernavaca, 1597)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 2, Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVI, eds., Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, Constantino Medina Lima (Mexico: Consejo Nacional de Ciencias Tecnología, 1999), 304–305.

IDIEZ def. náhuatl:

Ahuacacuahuitl itlacca; cuatlacquetl; cequin tlaqui tohtolontic huan cequin huehhuehueyac; iixnezca xoxoctic, yayahuic zo tlapalli; inacayo xoxoctic huan nelyamanic; quipiya hueyi iyollo huan cequin cuecuetzin. “Tlamachtihquetl inanan quipiya nahui chiquihuitl ahuacatl iuccitoc huan quinahuatih iconeuh ma quinamacati canahya.”

IDIEZ morfología:

tlat.

themes:

Food, Eating, Cooking

Plants, Trees, Flora