cuitlapilli atlapalli. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

cuitlapilli atlapalli.

Principal English Translation:

commoners, vassals (a metaphor)

Alonso de Molina:

cuitlapilli atlapalli. gente menuda, vasallos, omaceuales. Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 27r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:

the expression in cuitlapilli in ahtlapalli, a metaphor for the common people. cuitlatl, excrement or extrusion, and pilli.
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), 216.

Attestations from sources in English:

Cuitlapilli, in atlapalli. Quitoznequi: maceoalli = The tail and the wing. This means the common people.
Thelma D. Sullivan, "Nahuatl Proverbs, Conundrums, and Metaphors, Collected by Sahagún," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 4 (1963), 146–147.

cuitlapilli, atlapilli = tail, wing; a metaphor for commoners, subjects
John Bierhorst, A Nahuatl-English Dictionary and Concordance to the Cantares Mexicanos, 1985.

a ieh motolinja in tlatqujtl, in tlamamalli, in cujtlapilli, in atlapilli: ca inan, ca ita qujtemoa, ca inan ita qujnequj, ca mopachollanj = O, the poor, the governed, who seek their mother, their father; who require their mother, their father; who desire to be governed (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, 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, 1961), 23.

yn ompa Rey catca francia yn itoca Dõ henrriq̃. quarto. Oquimictique. auh yn quimicti ҫan ce ymacehual ybaxe ycalliticnencauh amo pilli amo cauallero ҫan cuitlapilli atlapalli = the late king in France, named don Enrique IV, was killed. The person who killed him was just one of his vassals, his page, a servant living in his house, not a noble, not a gentleman, just a commoner (central Mexico, 1610)
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), 166–7.

Attestations from sources in Spanish:

cuitlapilli, ahtlapalli = la cola, el ala [la gente del pueblo]
Bernardino de Sahagún, Coloquios y Doctrina Cristiana, 1524.

themes:

Metaphors, Proverbs, Riddles

Social Hierarchy, Commoners, Elites