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.

chichinatza.

Headword: 
chichinatza.
Principal English Translation: 

to afflict or torment someone; to cause someone pain (see Molina)

IPAspelling: 
tʃitʃinɑtsɑ
Alonso de Molina: 

chichinatza. nite. (pret. onitechichinatz.) afligir o atormentar a otro.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 19v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

CHICHINATZ(A) vt to cause someone to suffer pain / afligir o atormentarse a otro (M) [(3)Cf.52r,75r]. See CHINOĀ.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 49.

Attestations from sources in English: 

Ca huel tēchichinatz = it's really distressing (chichinatza 'to torment')
Michel Launey, An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, translated and adapted by Christopher MacKay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 161.

oticyolihtlaco, in oticyolchichinatz = you offended him
Susanne Klaus, Uprooted Christianity: The Preaching of the Christian Doctrine in Mexico, Based on Franciscan Sermons of the 16th Century Written in Nahuatl (Bonn: Bonner Amerikanistische Studien e. V. c/o Seminar für Völkerkunde, Universität Bonn, 1999), 249.