atlacatl. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

atlacatl.

Principal English Translation:

a sailor, a boater, or one who fishes from a boat; or, a bad person (see Molina and attestations)

Orthographic Variants:

ahtlaca-tl

IPAspelling:

ɑhtɬɑːkɑːtɬ

Alonso de Molina:

atlacatl. marinero, o mal hombre.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 8r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

ĀTLAHCA–TL. M combines the definition of this and of AHTLĀCA–TL 'inhuman person' in a single entry. They both contrast with C's ĀTLĀCA–TL 'person made of water'. R does not indicate the internal glottal stop.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:

natlacatl = I am a bad person, I am inhumane
This is an example of the way i gives way before any following vowel (in this case, a, the first letter of atlacatl). If it didn't give way, the word would be niatlacatl.
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), 2.

Attestations from sources in English:

The Matrícula de Huexotzinco includes a person named Felipe Amin who has an occupation listed as Tlatlama Atlacatl, which suggests that he fishes perhaps from a boat. Thus, this atlacatl would be more akin to the translation as "sailor." (See f. 576r.)
See the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs.

a bad or inhuman person, monster. ah negative, plus tlacatl.
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), 211.

themes:

Behavior, Personality

Marine, Maritime, Lacustrine

Water