mixitl.

Headword: 
mixitl.
Principal English Translation: 

a hallucinogenic plant

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), 225.

IPAspelling: 
miːʃiːtɬ
Frances Karttunen: 

MĪXĪ-TL intoxicating herb, possibly jimsonweed / hierba que altera el cerebro (S) [(4)Cf.60V,116V,121r]. C gives the vowel of the second syllable long. according to S, the possessed form is –MĪX, but this is unlikely, since long stem-final vowels do not drop. This is conventionally used in the phrase IN MĪXĪ-TL, IN TLĀPĀ-TL ‘intoxication.’
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 149.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

used in a pair with tlāpātl, generally with reference to inebriation and pulque drinking. 225

Attestations from sources in English: 

mixitl (noun) = a narcotic plant; see tlapatl
Daniel Garrison Brinton, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry: Containing the Nahuatl Text of XXVII Ancient Mexican Poems (1877), 157.

In ticicatinemi, in timeltzotzontinemi: in iuhqui mixitl, in iuhqui tlapatl otiquic. Itechpa mitoa: in aquin ayocmo quicaquiznequi tenontzaliztli = You are panting and beating your breast as if you had drunk a potion of jimson weed. This is said about someone who no longer wishes to listen to admonition.
Thelma D. Sullivan, "Nahuatl Proverbs, Conundrums, and Metaphors, Collected by Sahagún," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 4 (1963), 162–163.

can mach mjto, ac mach qujto, ac mach qujtocaioti, in mjxitl, in tlapatl in octli = How can it be said? Who can it have been who said it? Who can it have been who referred to pulque as jimson weed? (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), 69.

noce qujmjlhvia, mjxitl, tlapatl ilhvil, itequjuh iez, octli qujmocujtlaviz = Or he said to them: "Jimson weed will be his desert, his mission. He will take to pulque" (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), 198.

mixitl = "average size, round, gree-leafed. It has seeds. Where there is gout, there [the ground seeds] are spread on. It is not edible, not drinkable It paralyzes one, closes one's eyes, tightens the throat, stops off the voice, makes one thirsty, deadens the testicles, splits the tongue. It is not noticeable that it has been drunk, when it is drunk. He whom it paralyzes, if his eyes are closeed, remains forever with closed eyes. That which he is looking at, he looks at forever. One becomes right, mute. It is alleviated a little with wine [this is the loanword "vino" in the Nahuatl text]."
Sahagún, Bernardino de, Antonio Valeriano, Alonso Vegerano, Martín Jacobita, Pedro de San Buenaventura, Diego de Grado, Bonifacio Maximiliano, Mateo Severino, et al. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Florentine Codex), Ms. Mediceo Palatino 218–20, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, MiBACT, 1577. Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter, Alicia Maria Houtrouw, Kevin Terraciano, Jeanette Peterson, Diana Magaloni, and Lisa Sousa, bk. 11, fol. 130v. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/130v . Accessed 17 November 2025.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

in moqueztlatzinia, in macopiloa, in tocuilehua, in tzatzi, in oyoa; in yuhqui mixitl, in yuhqui tlapatl, in yuhqui uctli, nanacatl in oquic, in oquicua, in aocmo quimati = [y que] como si hubiera bebido o comido la yerba que embriaga, el tlápatl, el pulque, el hongo, ya no entiende (centro de México, s. XVI) Josefina García Quintana, "Exhortación de un padre a su hijo; texto recogido por Andrés de Olmos," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 11 (1974), 154–155.