cepayahuitl. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

cepayahuitl.

Principal English Translation:

snow (the noun)
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 157.

Orthographic Variants:

cepayauitl, çepayauitl, çepayavitl, cepayauitl, ceppayahuitl

IPAspelling:

sepɑyɑwitɬ

Alonso de Molina:

Cepayauitl. nieue.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 18r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.Cepayauitl vetzi. neuar. Pret. cepayauitl ouetz.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua mexicana y castellana, 1571, (www.idiez.org.mx), f. 18r.

Frances Karttunen:

CEPAYAHU(I)-TL snow / nieve (M) M also has the associated verb, cepayahui, ‘to snow.’ The possessed form of the noun is not attested, but by analogy with QUIYAHU(I)-TL, -CEPAYAUH is to be expected. See CE-TL.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 32.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:

ihuan iquac cequi hualmomimilo in cepayahuitl hualixxitin in Iztactepetl = And at this time some of the snow came rolling down on Iztactepetl; its surface came falling in (there was an avalanche) (17th c., central New Spain)

contains cetl ice, something cold; related to quiyahuitl, tlapaquiyahuitl.

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), 86–87, 214.

Attestations from sources in English:

nohuiyan cuauhtla o nohuiyan tepeuh yn ceppayahuitl o cepayauh cenca chicahuac in motecac cepayahuitl oc cenca oncan ytech yn chicahuac motecac tepetl yn quitocayotia Tenan ỹ nican tonahuac catqui cuyohuacan = And in the forests all around the snow came down and it snowed. It made a very heavy covering; it covered especially heavily the mountain they call Tenan which is here near to us, in Coyoacan. (central Mexico, 1613)
Annals of His Time: Don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, James Lockhart, Susan Schroeder, and Doris Namala, eds. and transl. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 234–235.

Cepaiauitl,... quinestia, inezca in pisquiztli. = Snow... It foretold, and was an omen of, [good] crops. (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 7 -- The Sun, Moon, and Stars, and the Binding of the Venus, No. 14, Part VIII, 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), 19.

cepayauitl huetzi = to snow (Molina)

mochiuh yeyecatli yuā cehzepayahuitli mocha huetzqui quajuitli yuā yolcame motolinique = the wind and snow kept coming. All the trees fell and the animals suffered.
Here in This Year: Seventeenth-Century Nahuatl Annals of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Valley, ed. and transl. Camilla Townsend, with an essay by James Lockhart (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 174–175.

ypan nahui ora peuhqui quiyahuitli Lones cemilhuitli cepayauh = at 4 o’clock it began to rain. On Monday it snowed all day.
Here in This Year: Seventeenth-Century Nahuatl Annals of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Valley, ed. and transl. Camilla Townsend, with an essay by James Lockhart (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 178–179.

oceppayauh. yn intech yztac tepetl. yhuan popocatepetl cenca yc moquimiloque, yn ceppayahuitl, yhuan ynic nohuiampa quauhtla, yn intech tetepe, nohuian yntech huetz. yn ceppayahuitl = on Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl it snowed; they were wrapped in a great deal of snow, and snow fell all around in the forests on the mountains (central Mexico, 1611–1612)
Annals of His Time: Don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, James Lockhart, Susan Schroeder, and Doris Namala, eds. and transl. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 194–5.

Attestations from sources in Spanish:

yquac çepayahuitl = entonces ocurrió una nevada. (Tlaxcala, 1662–1692)
Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, Historia cronológica de la Noble Ciudad de Tlaxcala, transcripción paleográfica, traducción, presentación y notas por Luis Reyes García y Andrea Martínez Baracs (Tlaxcala y México: Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, Secretaría de Extensión Universitaria y Difusión Cultural, y Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, 1995), 262–263.

themes:

Weather, Climate