⚠ 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.

ayotectli.

Headword: 
ayotectli.
Principal English Translation: 

a calabash cup, a gourd drinking vessel (see attestations)

Orthographic Variants: 
aiutectli
IPAspelling: 
ɑːjohtektɬi
Alonso de Molina: 

Ayotectli. vaso de calabaça.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua mexicana y castellana, 1571, (www.idiez.org.mx), f. 3v.

Attestations from sources in English: 

çe ayotectli = a calabash vessel (Culhuacan, 16th c.)
Testaments of Culhuacan (provisionally modified first edition), eds. Sarah Cline and Miguel León-Portilla, online version http://www.history.ucsb.edu/cline/testaments_of_culhuacan.pdf, 14.

bitter squash
The Mexican Treasury: The Writings of Dr. Francisco Hernández, ed. Simon Varey, transl. Rafael Chabrán, Cynthia L. Chamberlin, and Simon Varey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 131.

aiutectli = jars made of calabashes tecomatl = vase (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 1 -- The Gods; No. 14, Part 2, 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, 1950), 19.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

clabos chiquacen tominestica oc onicnamacazguia yhuan onca guauhtecontotontin tlacuiloltin yhuan centetl ayotectli yhuan nauhtetl
xicaltotontin yhuan onca nometlaton 4 tomines monamacaz = seis tomines de clavos que había de vender, y unas jícar[as] pintadas y una
mano de concha con que se mece el cacao, y otras cuatro jicarillas, y una piedra de moler, todo se venda (San Pablo Tozanitlan, México, 1576)
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), 180–181.

themes: 
Beverages
Food, Eating, Cooking
Technology, Tools