cuauhtla. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

cuauhtla.

Principal English Translation:

the forest, the woods, mountains, wilderness (see Karttunen and attestations)

Orthographic Variants:

cuauhtlah

IPAspelling:

kwɑwtɬɑh

Frances Karttunen:

CUAUHTLAH = mountain, wilderness, forest / montaña, arboleda o bosque (M) See CUAHU(I)-TL, -TLAH.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 64.

Attestations from sources in English:

cuauhtlah = a forest, a windy place, cold, sorrowful; a place of crags, stones, peaks, but also grassy places (summary by SW of the translation made by Anderson & Dibble of the Nahuatl text)
Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 109v, Sahagún, Bernardino de. Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain. Transcribed and translated with notes by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble. 2nd rev. ed. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research / University of Utah Press, 1950–82. Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/109v Accessed 11 November 2025.

ceppayauh ỹ nohuiyan cuauhtlah = it snowed everywhere in the woods (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), 240–1.

Attestations from sources in Spanish:

I zan omocalaqui, in cuauhtla, i zacatla; ihuan inehuian omoquixti in axixpan, in cuitlapan = Sólo por su propia voluntad se metió en el bosque, en el zacatal; él mismo se metió en los orinaderos, en el lugar del excremento (centro de México, s. XVI)
Josefina García Quintana, "Exhortación de un padre a su hijo; texto recogido por Andrés de Olmos," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 11 (1974), 158–159.

themes:

Landscape Features