Principal English Translation:
thread, yarn
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.
Alonso de Molina:
icpatl. hilo.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 33v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
Frances Karttunen:
ĪCPA-TL thread, hemp fiber / hilo (M), hilo, pita, cáñamo (T) [(1)Tp.128]. See ĪCH-TLI.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 95.
Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:
(i)cpatl. Some evidence points to the i being long, but since it is seen elided in some sources, for at least some speakers it must have been short, which fits better with the structure of the word, for initial ī in a simple root was rare and before two consonants much rarer. 219
Attestations from sources in English:
in tlamachchiuhqui: ca icpatl quimauiltiani, icpachiuhqui. = The weaver of designs is one who concerns herself with using thread, who works with thread. (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 10 -- The People, No. 14, Part 11, 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), 51.
Auh niquitoa y nonamictzin catca yn icpatzi yn quimochihuilizquia = And I declare that my late wife had yarn that she was going to make into something (Culhuacan, 1580)
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, 18.
Attestations from sources in Spanish:
quitequipanova ynn icpatl = trabaja con el hilo de algodon (Tlaxcala, 1562)
Catálogo de documentos escritos en Náhuatl, siglo XVI, vol. I (México, Gobierno del Estado de Tlaxcala, 2013), 10.
IDIEZ def. náhuatl:
ICPATL. tlat. Tlamalintli iloh, iixnezca chipahuac quitequihuah ica quichihchihuah cantelah o ica tlailpiah.
-Notatah quicohqui ce tolontic icpatl para quitequihuiz quemman tlatlacualtiz