⚠ 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.

huitzoctli.

Headword: 
huitzoctli.
Principal English Translation: 

a pointed oaken pole for levering sod loose or planting seeds (an agricultural implement)
James Lockhart, The Nahuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 201.

Orthographic Variants: 
uitzoctli, huitzouhtli
IPAspelling: 
witsoːktɬi
Alonso de Molina: 

uitzoctli. palanca de roble puntiaguda para arrancar cespedes y abrir la tierra.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 157v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

HUITZŌC-TLI hoe / palanca de roble puntiaguda para arrancar céspedes y abrir la tierra (M) [(3)Xp.101]. See HUITZ-TLI.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 91.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

sharp-pointed stick of hard wood for levering out and breaking sod...contains huitzli, thorn, something sharp-pointed
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), 219.

Attestations from sources in English: 

augtin ycnotl yteicauh dio hernandez matlallihui oquicouh huitzoctli ypatiuh mo = Agustín Icnotl, younger brother of Diego Hernández Matlalihui bought a digging stick; it cost half a tomín. (n.d., sixteenth century)
Testaments of Culhuacan (provisionally modified first edition), eds. Sarah Cline and Miguel León-Portilla, online version http://www.history.ucsb.edu/cline/testaments_of_culhuacan.pdf, 13.

themes: 
Agriculture, Gardens, Stockraising
Technology, Tools
Wood, wooden material
See also: 
tlapalihui.
tlapalihuiztli.