Search Issues: Update 2026-09-16 - Repairs to some of our search pages are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

iyaya.

Headword: 
iyaya.
Principal English Translation: 

to stink, or stench (see Molina)

Orthographic Variants: 
îiaia, ŷiaia
IPAspelling: 
ihyɑːyɑ
Alonso de Molina: 

iyaya. n. (pret. oniyayac.) heder, o tener mal olor.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 36v. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

(I)HYĀYA to stink / heder o tener mal olor (M) [(3)Tp.131,230,244 (7)Zp.12,34,54,66,227]. This drops the initial I after the reflexive prefixes but retains it after the nonspecific object prefix TLA-.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 102.

Attestations from sources in English: 

See an image that represents iyaya in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).

yiaxtiuh = it stinks; mjqujzîiaia (miquiziyaya) = it stinks of death (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), 132, 133.

îiaia = it stinks; ŷiaia = it stinks; cujtlâiac (cuitlayac) = smelling of excrement; mjqujciiac (miquiciyac) = smelling of death (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), 132.

xoqujiatic = fetid (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), 132.