cuicui. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

cuicui.

Principal English Translation:

to gather up dispersed things; to get ready, to be prepared; to take something away; to work wood or stone by chipping off the surface; to clean up a surface (see Karttuen); also, for a man to have relations with a woman

IPAspelling:

kwihkwi

Alonso de Molina:

cuicui. nitla. (pret. onitlacuicuic.) entallar en madera, o alimpiar el suelo quitando lo que echan de la mesa.
cuicui. nitla. coger cosas esparzidas.
cuicui. nic. (pret. oniccuicuic.) tener parte el hombre con la muger.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 26v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

CUIHCUI vrefl,vt to get ready, to be prepared; to take something away, to work wood or stone by chipping off the surface, to clean up a surface / se dispone… se prepara (Z), lo trae (T), labro piedra o madera, como hace el escultor (C for first pers. sg. Subject,) entallar en madera, o alimpiar el suelo quitando lo que echan de la mesa (M) With reference to sculpting and cleaning, the indefinite object prefix TLA- may be absorbed into the stem. M also gives cuicui with a gloss about copulation, but there is no way to know if the form has short vowel, long vowel, or vowel-plus-glottal stop reduplication. redup. CUI
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 71–72.

Attestations from sources in English:

See an image that represents cuicui in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).

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