Principal English Translation:
power; permission; possibility, ability; yes (see Karttunen and Lockhart)
Alonso de Molina:
Amo veli. cosa impossible.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua mexicana y castellana, 1571, (www.idiez.org.mx), f. 5v.
Frances Karttunen:
HUEL(I) to be able to / puede (Z) S gives this as an alternative of HUEL, but it does not appear in M. In the sources for this dictionary HUEL(I) is abundantly attested across sources with negation, as in AHHUEL(I) ‘impossible,’ AOC HUEL(I) ‘no longer possible’ AYA HUEL(I) ‘not yet possible’ and in Z as a shortened form of the verb HUELITI ‘to be able to do something’ In view of the verb HUELITI ‘to be able to do something’ HUEL is probably a truncation of more basic HUEL(I). See HUEL.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 86.
Horacio Carochi / English:
hueli = archaic word having to do with power; the absolutive ending is not known
Horacio Carochi, S.J., Grammar of the Mexican language with an explanation of its adverbs (1645), translated and edited with commentary by James Lockhart, UCLA Latin American Studies Volume 89 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2001), 450-51 n4, n4, n7; 502.
Attestations from sources in English:
Dios tetatzin cemixquich ihuelli = God the Father entirely All-powerful
"Breve tratado," Taxco, 1774; translation by Mark Z. Christensen, "Nahua and Maya Catholicisms: Ecclesiastical Texts and Local Religion in Colonial Central Mexico and Yucatan," Ph.D. Dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, 2010, Appendix B, 6.
-hueli = power (this is the possessed form; the original absolutive is not known)
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), 218.
mohuelitzin = your power (and with a request = your permission)
Robert Haskett and Stephanie Wood's notes from Nahuatl sessions with James Lockhart and subsequent research.
Attestations from sources in Spanish:
Dios Tetatzin yxquichi hueli = Dios padre todopoderoso (Tizatlan, Tlaxcala, 1595)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 2, Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVI, eds., Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, Constantino Medina Lima (Mexico: Consejo Nacional de Ciencias Tecnología, 1999), 292–293.