Principal English Translation:
to one side, sideways, perversely, in a crooked fashion (see Molina); a fraction or half the fingers, i.e. five fingers, hence the number five in number combinations, where one might expect to see macuilli: e.g. chicuey, five plus three, eight (see Siméon)
Alonso de Molina:
Chico. auiesamente. Aduerbio.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, f. 20r.
Frances Karttunen:
CHICO to one side, indirectly, perversely / aviesamente (M), a un lado (C) T has the variant CHICUA.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 49.
Horacio Carochi / English:
chico = to one side
Horacio Carochi, S.J., Grammar of the Mexican language with an explanation of its adverbs (1645), translated and edited with commentary by James Lockhart, UCLA Latin American Studies Volume 89 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2001), 346-47 with n2, 498.
Andrés de Olmos:
"Este se antepone y entrepone al verbo, quiere dezir auiesamente o al reues. Ex. : chico ximotlali, sientate al lado; -- nitlachicocaqui, entiendo algo al reues. Pero es de notar que no lo tomaran para dezir: al reues vesti el sayo, porque para esto diran : amo uelh oninoquenti, vel oniquixcuep notilhma. "
Andrés de Olmos, Arte para aprender la lengua Mexicana, ed. Rémi Siméon, facsimile edition ed. Miguel León-Portilla (Guadalajara: Edmundo Aviña Levy, 1972), 182.
Attestations from sources in English:
chico calaqui, chico calacqui = to enter sideways or at an angle
Attestations from sources in Spanish:
"chico ocupa el lugar de macuilli [en los numerales] y significa fracción, sin duda mitad de los dedos"
Rémi Siméon, Diccionario de la lengua náhuatl o mexicana (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1988), xliv.
chico = a un lado
Miguel León-Portilla, "Los nombres de lugar en náhuatl," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 15 (1982), 38.