ichpana. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

ichpana.

Principal English Translation:

to sweep something (see Karttunen)

Orthographic Variants:

ichpāna

IPAspelling:

itʃpɑːnɑ

Frances Karttunen:

(I)CHPĀN(A) vt to sweep something / lo barre (T) M has an entry chpana to be used with the prefix TLA- and also TLACHPĀN(A), where the object prefix has been absorbed into the stem and the verb is treated as intransitive (I)CHPĀN(A) may be related by metathesis to CHIPĀHU(A) ‘to purify something’ Z has the variant (I)CHPĀHU(A) and also two attestations of OCH for (I)CH, which appears to relate this to M’s ochpantli ‘road,’ in the sense that a road is kept swept clean.

(I)CHPĀNILIĀ applic. (I)CHPĀN(A).

(I)CHPĀNALŌ nonact. (I)CHPĀN(A).

(I)CHPĀHU(A) See (I)CHPĀN(A) .
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 93.

Attestations from sources in English:

Izcan taiz, izcan ticchioaz: tochpanaz, titlacujcujz = Here is what thou art to perform, here is what thou art to do: thou art to sweep, to clean (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), 214.

themes:

Cleanliness, Orderliness (or lack of)