Principal English Translation:
horn(s) (of an animal) (see Lockhart), antler(s) (see Karttunen)
Orthographic Variants:
quaquauitl, quaquahuitl, cuācuahuitl
Alonso de Molina:
quaquauitl. cuerno de animal, o astas.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 85v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
Frances Karttunen:
CUĀCUAHU(I)-TL horn, antler / cuerno de animal, o astas (M) [(2)Cf.9v,56r]. The literal sense of this is ‘head-tree.’ See CUĀ(I)-TL, CUAHU(I)-TL.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 56.
Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:
horn (of an animal)
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), 231.
Attestations from sources in English:
quetzalquaquaujtl = Quetzal feather horns (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 8 -- Kings and Lords, no. 14, Part IX, 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), 28.
See the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs for the personal name Cuacuauh, where a man has horns on his head.