⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-06

Some of our more complex, multi-field searches (such as the search field on our homepage and Search All Fields) are currently under repair and may not work as expected.

Thank you to all our users who emailed to alert us to the problem! We hope to have it repaired soon.

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

cuiloa.

Headword: 
cuiloa.
Principal English Translation: 

to write or paint; to record, as in a census

Orthographic Variants: 
cuilloa
IPAspelling: 
kwiloɑ
Alonso de Molina: 

cuiloa. nitla. (pret. onitlacuilo.) escreuir o pintar algo.
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.

Attestations from sources in English: 

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

onitlacuilo = I wrote it (a very common phrase)
Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), 21.

hoquicuillo = wrote it down (early seventeenth 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), 104.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

auh y quicuilo yn itocan Francisco yntiotzin chane Sant Juan Huactzinco = Y lo pintó el llamado Francisco, indio habitante de San Juan Huactzinco. (Tlaxcala, 1662–1692)
Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, Historia cronológica de la Noble Ciudad de Tlaxcala, transcripción paleográfica, traducción, presentación y notas por Luis Reyes García y Andrea Martínez Baracs (Tlaxcala y México: Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, Secretaría de Extensión Universitaria y Difusión Cultural, y Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, 1995), 432–433.

oquicuilo yn mochi vezinos çeçecalli = Censó a todos los vecinos de cada casa.
Nuestro pesar, nuestra aflicción / tunetuliniliz, tucucuca; Memorias en lengua náhuatl enviadas a Felipe II por indígenas del Valle de Guatemala hacia 1572, introduction by Cristopher H. Lutz, paleography and translation by Karen Dakin (México: UNAM and Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica, 1996, 30–31.