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.

camotli.

Headword: 
camotli.
Principal English Translation: 

an edible root much like a sweet potato
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), 213.

Orthographic Variants: 
camohtli
IPAspelling: 
kɑmohtɬi
Alonso de Molina: 

camotli. batata, rayz comestible.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 12r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

CAMOH-TLI pl: -MEH ~-TIN sweet potato / batata, raiz comestible (M), camote, raiz comestible bien conocida (R)
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 24.

Attestations from sources in English: 

The Florentine Codex, Book 11, f. 127v, describes the camotli as s cylindrical, ball-like, twisted root vegetable. It is edible raw or cooked in a pot. The plant creeps like a bean. There is a small camotli that is called the camoxalli. Another variety is the xicamoxihuitl, nicknamed xicama, jícama in Spanish and English today, with white flesh, juicy, and edible raw.
Sahagún, Bernardino de, Antonio Valeriano, Alonso Vegerano, Martín Jacobita, Pedro de San Buenaventura, Diego de Grado, Bonifacio Maximiliano, Mateo Severino, et al. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Florentine Codex), Ms. Mediceo Palatino 218–20, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, MiBACT, 1577. Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter, Alicia Maria Houtrouw, Kevin Terraciano, Jeanette Peterson, Diana Magaloni, and Lisa Sousa, bk. 11, fol. 127v. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/127v?spTexts=&nhTexts= . Accessed 16 November 2025.

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

puxcamotli = a variety of camote (poxcauh- = moldy)
Frances F. Berdan and Patricia Rieff Anawalt, The Codex Mendoza, 1992, vol. 1, 200).