⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-17 - Repairs are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

Some of our more complex, multi-field searches (such as the search field on our homepage and Search All Fields) are currently under repair and may not work as expected.

Thank you to all our users who emailed to alert us to the problem! We hope to have it repaired soon.

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

nelhuayotl.

Headword: 
nelhuayotl.
Principal English Translation: 

a beginning, foundation, or starting point; a root or vein (see Molina and Karttunen)

IPAspelling: 
nelwɑyoːtɬ
Alonso de Molina: 

nelhuayotl. principio, fundamento, o comienzo.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 66v. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

NELHUAYŌ-TL pl: -MEH base, foundation, starting point, root or vein / principio, fundamento, o comienzo (M), raíz (T), vena (X) [(3)Tp.132,154,167,(3)Xp.56]. This is an abstract derivation from NELHUA-TL 'root,' but apparently it can be used concretely and hence synonymously with NELHUA-TL itself. It is not clear whether the possessed form attested in T is the simple possessed form of this or the inalienably possessed form of NELHUA-TL. M also has nelhuayo, which represents NELHUAYOH 'something that has a root,' which also appears in P.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 164.

Attestations from sources in English: 

nelhuayotl (noun) = a root; fig., principle, foundation, essence
Daniel Garrison Brinton, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry: Containing the Nahuatl Text of XXVII Ancient Mexican Poems (1877), 158.