Principal English Translation:
to use; to be necessary; to require; to be wanted (see Molina and Karttunen)
Alonso de Molina:
monequi. es necessario, o conuiene.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 059r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
monequi atle notech=. biuir en pobreza.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 059r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
Frances Karttunen:
MONEQU(I) to be necessary or wanting, to be useful / es necesario, se necesita (Z), serme útil, ventajoso, usarse en provecho mío, hablando de una cosa (S for construction with NOTECH) The person or thing experiencing lack or need is expressed with -TECH in construction with this lexicalized use of the reflexive of the verb NEQU(I) 'to want something' In Z the negation AHMŌ MONEQU(I) is glossed as ‘it does not matter' M glosses monequiatle notech as ‘to live in poverty,’ but atle monectoc ‘for there to be an abundance of whatever is necessary.' See NEQU(I).
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 152.
Horacio Carochi / English:
monequi = it is used or needed
Horacio Carochi, S.J., Grammar of the Mexican language with an explanation of its adverbs (1645), translated and edited with commentary by James Lockhart, UCLA Latin American Studies Volume 89 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2001), 506.
Attestations from sources in English:
monequi = is used or is needed
Horacio Carochi, S.J., Grammar of the Mexican language with an explanation of its adverbs (1645), translated and edited with commentary by James Lockhart, UCLA Latin American Studies Volume 89 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2001), 507.
Reflexive.
An example of the past tense, omonec = was used.
Another: yn totech omonequia = which was necessary to us; we used.
Robert Haskett and Stephanie Wood's notes from Nahuatl sessions with James Lockhart and subsequent research.