Search Issues: Update 2026-09-16 - Repairs to some of our search pages are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

amantecatl.

Headword: 
amantecatl.
Principal English Translation: 

an artisan (Karttunen); a person who works in the mechanical arts (Molina); also, a feather worker
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 10 -- The People, No. 14, Part 11, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1961), 61.

IPAspelling: 
ɑːmɑnteːkɑtɬ
Alonso de Molina: 

Amantecatl. oficial de arte mecanica.
Amanteca. oficiales de artes mecanicas.
Amantecayotl. arte de oficial mecanico, o cosa que pertenece ala dicha arte.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua mexicana y castellana, 1571, (www.idiez.org.mx), f. 4v.

Frances Karttunen: 

ĀMANTĒCA-TL artisan / oficial de arte mecánica (M)[(1)Bf.10v,(2)Cf.4v,(1)Tp.170,(1)Rp.60]. This is originally referred specifically to featherworkers. In T it has special sense of ´healer, curandero,´while R glosses it as ´interlocutor, speaker.´
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 10.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

āmantēcatl = artisan, sometimes specifically featherworker. abs. pl. āmantēcah. originally meant inhabitant of Āmantlān
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.

Attestations from sources in English: 

See an image that represents amantecatl in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).

Amantecatl, hacic, ixe, iollo. = The featherworker [is] accomplished, ingenious. (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 10 -- The People, No. 14, Part 11, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1961), 25.

Literally, inhabitant of Amantlan, this came to mean featherworker, skilled craftsman in general. Like other ethnically derived trade designations, it dropped the ethnic connotation over time. Another example is toltecatl. (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
James Lockhart, The Nahuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 192.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

amantecatl = plumajero (ca. 1582, México)
Luis Reyes García, ¿Como te confundes? ¿Acaso no somos conquistados? Anales de Juan Bautista (Mexico: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Biblioteca Lorenzo Boturini Insigne y Nacional Basílica de Guadalupe, 2001), 27.

themes: 
Art, Crafts
Feathers
Occupations, Responsibilities