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.

matzayani.

Headword: 
matzayani.
Principal English Translation: 

for a wall to open up, or for the sky to open up, etc. (see Molina)

IPAspelling: 
mɑːtsɑjɑːni
Alonso de Molina: 

matzayani. (pret. omatzayan.) abrirse la pared o el cielo. &c.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 53v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English: 

omatzayan in ilhuicatl, auh niman quimottili in sp̄ū sancto. ye on ma huilotzintli ipā omixeuhtzino ipantzinco ohualmotemohui = The sky split open, and then He saw the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove that descended upon Him. (central Mexico, early seventeenth century)
Codex Chimalpahin: Society and Politics in Mexico Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Culhuacan, and Other Nahuatl Altepetl in Central Mexico; The Nahuatl and Spanish Annals and Accounts Collected and Recorded by don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), vol. 2, 158–159.

themes: 
Celestial Phenomena