⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-17 - Repairs are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

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.

inecui.

Headword: 
inecui.
Principal English Translation: 

to smell something (see Karttunen)

Orthographic Variants: 
ihnecui
IPAspelling: 
ihnekwi
Alonso de Molina: 

inecui. nitlatla. (pret. onitlatlanecu.) rastrear por el oler.
inecui. nitla. (pret. onitlanecu.) oler algo.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 38v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

IHNECU(I) vt to smell something / oler algo (M)

(I)HNECUĪTIĀ altern. caus. (I)HNECU(I)
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 99.

Attestations from sources in English: 

in mahan xuchitl in oconjnecu in oconmaujҫo = even as the flower which one hath smelled, hath marveled at (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), 8.

inecui = to smell something, to perceive an odor
Daniel Garrison Brinton, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry: Containing the Nahuatl Text of XXVII Ancient Mexican Poems (1887), 155.yn iiacac vitz xochitl ic tlamanalo, aiac achto qujnecuj, intlacamo achto ic tlamanaz = It was the first flowers to appear which were thus given as offerings. None might breathe the scent without first providing an offering. (16th century, Mexico City)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 2—The Ceremonies, No. 14, Part III, 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, 1951), 55.

themes: 
Flowers
Sensory Perception (sound, smell, etc.)