⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-17 - Repairs are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

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.

camactli.

Headword: 
camactli.
Principal English Translation: 

the mouth (see Karttunen)

IPAspelling: 
kɑmɑktɬi
Frances Karttunen: 

CAMAC-TLI pl: -TIN mouth / boca (X), su boca ( T for possessed form) C gives –CAMAC as an alternative possessed form for CAM(A)-TL. The locative –CAMAC has the sense ‘place where is an abundance of something.’ See CAM(A)-TL.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 23.

Attestations from sources in English: 

Ҫaҫan tleino, tecpatica texoa, cuetlaxtli vncan onoc, nacatica tzacquj. Tocamac = What is that which grinds with flint knives, in which a piece of leather lies, enclosed in flesh? Our mouth (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, 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), 238.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

Ҫaҫan tleino, tecpatica texoa, cuetlaxtli vncan onoc, nacatica tzacquj. Tocamac = Que cosa y cosa que muele con pedernales y alli tiene vn cuero blando hechado y esta cercado con carne. Es la boca que tiene los dientes con que masca y la lengua tendida en medio esta cerrada con carne. sõ los labios eta (centro de México, s. XVI)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, 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), 238.

themes: 
Anatomy