⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-06

Some of our more complex, multi-field searches (such as the search field on our homepage and Search All Fields) are currently under repair and may not work as expected.

Thank you to all our users who emailed to alert us to the problem! We hope to have it repaired soon.

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

ayahuitl.

Headword: 
ayahuitl.
Principal English Translation: 

cloud, fog, mist (see Karttunen); fog; or, a cloudiness in the eye (see Molina)

Orthographic Variants: 
āyahuitl, ayauitl
IPAspelling: 
ɑːyɑwitɬ
Alonso de Molina: 

ayauitl. niebla, neblina, o nuue del ojo.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 3r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

ĀYAHU(I)-TL cloud, fog / niebla, neblina, o nube del ojo (M) This has an interesting similarity to QUIYAHU(I)-TL rainstorm. See Ā-TL.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 16.

Attestations from sources in English: 

ayahuitl (noun) = fog, mist, vapor
Daniel Garrison Brinton, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry: Containing the Nahuatl Text of XXVII Ancient Mexican Poems (1887), 150.

in ipocyo, in ayauhyo: quitoznequi: imauizo, itenyo: anozo aca ueca oya, ayamo poliui in itenyo, in imauizzo = smoke and mist, meaning his fame and glory, had not yet vanished; or, about someone who had gone far away and whose fame and glory had not faded Thelma D. Sullivan, "Nahuatl Proverbs, Conundrums, and Metaphors, Collected by Sahagún," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 4 (1963), 144–145.

themes: 
Health, Sickness, Wellness, Medicine
Weather, Climate