cuicuiltic. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

cuicuiltic.

Principal English Translation:

something painted (see Karttunen); painted in multiple colors; or, with spots, moles, or freckles; perhaps also a design with squiggly lines, bent, twisted, which is found in hieroglyphs (SW)

Orthographic Variants:

cuihcuiltic

IPAspelling:

kwihkwiltik

Frances Karttunen:

CUIHCUILTIC something painted / pintado (T) [(2)Zp.98,149]. Z marks the vowels of the first and second syllables long in one attestation and those of the second and third syllables long in the other, but none should be long. See (I)HCUILOĀ.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 72.

Attestations from sources in English:

Cuicuil is a name attested in hieroglyph form in the Matrícula de Huexotzinco. One (f. 526v.), shows a person's head with lots of spots on it: https://aztecglyphs.wired-humanities.org/content/cuicuil-mh526v. Another name Cuicuil appears to be a painting, https://aztecglyphs.wired-humanities.org/content/cuicuil-mh647r. Another name is Tecuicuil, which appears to be a stone, likely painted with multiple colors, https://aztecglyphs.wired-humanities.org/content/tecuicuil-mh647v.

chiencuicuiltic = chia-spotted, a description of the wings of quail.
Elena Mazzetto, "Quail in the Religious Life of the Ancient Nahuas," in Susan Milbrath and Elizabeth Baquedano, eds., Birds and Beasts of Ancient Mesoamerica. Denver: University Press of Colorado, 2023, 206.

themes:

Art, Crafts