cozcatl. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

cozcatl.

Principal English Translation:

necklace, jewel, ornament, jewelry; or, a precious rock made into a rounded shape; or, rosary beads (see Molina, Karttunen, and Lockhart)

Orthographic Variants:

cuzcatl

IPAspelling:

koːskɑtɬ

Alonso de Molina:

cuzcatl. joya, piedra preciosa labrada de forma redonda, o cuenta para rezar.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 27v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

CŌZCA-TL pl; -MEH possesed form: -CŌZQUI jewel, ornament, necklace / joya, piedra preciosa labrada de forma redonda, o cuenta para rezar (M), collar, gargantilla (Z) This contrasts in vowel length COZTIC ‘yellow, golden.’ X ha a variant CŌZ-TLI.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 43.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:

a changes to i in the possessed form, which is -cōzqui, combining form cōzca-. -cōzqui. sing. possessed form of cōzcatl.
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), 216.

Attestations from sources in English:

cozcatl (noun) = jewel, precious stone; a string of such; a chain or collar Daniel Garrison Brinton, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry: Containing the Nahuatl Text of XXVII Ancient Mexican Poems (1887), 153.

In the Florentine Codex we see the precious necklace and the precious feather used to refer to babies and children and to describe a new life that could be placed within a young woman: in ce cozcatl, in ce quetzalli = the precious necklace, the precious feather. Additional metaphors for the newborn child include "the thorn, the spine of the grandfathers, of the grandmothers" and "the chip, the flake of those who already have gone to reside in the beyond..." (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), 137. See also 181.

tlacopacozcatl = necklaces of wood (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 2 -- The Ceremonies, no. 14, Part III, 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, 1951), 82.

icozqui chipoli = his shell necklace
James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Repertorium Columbianum v. 1 (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1993), 200.

concozcati in cozcatl, consuchicozcati = he put necklaces on him, he put flower necklaces on him
James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Repertorium Columbianum v. 1 (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1993), 114.

coztic teocuitlachayahuac cozcatl = the necklace of radiating golden pendants, also mentioned only by the Códice Florentino (CF VIII:28) as the dance adornment of rulers: 'coztic teucujtlachaiaoac cozcatl, chalchiuhtlacanaoallli iitic manj'
Justyna Olko, Turquoise Diadems and Staffs of Office: Elite Costume and Insignia of Power in Aztec and Early Colonial Mexico (Warsaw: Polish Society for Latin American Studies and Centre for Studies on the Classical Tradition, University of Warsaw, 2005), 56.

teocuitlaxuchicozcatl = golden flower necklace (mid sixteenth century, Central Mexico)
Louise M. Burkhart, Before Guadalupe: The Virgin Mary in Early Colonial Nahuatl Literature, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Monograph 13 (Albany: University at Albany, 2001), 123.

Attestations from sources in Spanish:

timitztotlanehuizque, ticozcatlanehuizque, tiquetzallanehuizque = hemos de pedirte en préstamo como cosa nuestra, hemos de solicitar en préstamo un collar, hemos de pedir en préstamo una pluma preciosa
Huehuehtlahtolli. Testimonios de la antigua palabra, ed. Librado Silva Galeana y un estudio introductorio por Miguel León-Portilla (México: Secretaría de Educación Pública, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1991), 50–51.

Toztlan nictemacac nocozquin = en Toztlan di una piedra que dicen cozcatl (Tenochtitlan, 1551)
Luis Reyes García, Eustaquio Celestino Solís, Armando Valencia Ríos, et al, Documentos nauas de la Ciudad de México del siglo XVI (México: Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social y Archivo General de la Nación, 1996), 93.

nocuzque = ¡oh joya mía!
Rémi Siméon, Diccionario de la lengua náhuatl o mexicana (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1988), xliii.

IDIEZ morfema:

cozcatl.

IDIEZ traduc. inglés:

necklace (older variant used now in compound words).

IDIEZ def. náhuatl:

XŌCHICOZCATL iyollo: axcanah motequihuia icelti. Ce tlamantli coztli tlachihchihualli ica icpatl [Mc. 27v].

IDIEZ morfología:

cōztli, ca3.

IDIEZ gramática:

tlat.

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