matlacuahuitl.

Headword: 
matlacuahuitl.
Principal English Translation: 

a very thick stick that is placed as a bar for hanging things such as drying meat; a shaft (see Molina); might this also be the matlaccuahuitl that was used in the Valley of Toluca and perhaps other regions for measuring land parcels in groups of ten?

Orthographic Variants: 
matlaquauitl, matlaquahuitl, matlaccuahuitl, matlacquahuitl
Alonso de Molina: 

matlaquauitl. varal.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 53r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English: 

"se nomill" = "one piece of land (milli) of mine;" this was sold by one "don" to another "don" for 11 pesos; it measured 25 quahuitl, said to be 20 and "tlaco" matlacquahuitl, and it held 2.5 almudes of maize seed. It would appear from this example that the matlacuahuitl (or matlaccuahuitl?) was slightly larger than the cuahuitl. (San Miguel Almoloya, Toluca Valley, 1754)
Stephanie Wood collection, notes from Nahuatl documents in the file "Bills of Sale," citing AGN (Mexico) Tierras 2539, exp. 11, ff. 4r, 7r. (Spanish translation on 7r.)

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

matlaquahuitl, en los Primeros Memoriales = mástiles largos en los cuales se colgaron los tetehuitl; llamado cuemmantli en el Códice Florentino (p. 98)
Katarzyna Mikulska, "Te hago bandera... Signos de banderas y sus significados en la expresión gráfica nahua", en Los códices mesoamericanos: registros de religión, política y sociedad, Miguel Ángel Ruz Barrio y Juan José Batalla Rosado, coordinadores (Zinacantepec: El Colegio Mexiquense, 2016), 85–133.

See also: