nemapopohualoni. | Nahuatl Dictionary

⚠ 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.

nemapopohualoni.

Headword:

nemapopohualoni.

Principal English Translation:

a towel for wiping the hands (see Karttunen); a cloth napkin; this was a tribute item at least in Morelos (see attestations)

Orthographic Variants:

nemapopoaloni, nemāpohpōhualōni, nemapupoloni

IPAspelling:

nemɑːpohpoːwɑloːni

Frances Karttunen:

NEMĀPOHPŌHUALŌNI towel for wiping the hands / instrumento para limpiarse las manos (C), paño de manos o toalla (M for nemapopoaloni tilmatli) [(1)Cf.45v]. See MĀPOHPŌHU(A).
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 165.

Attestations from sources in English:

See an image that represents nemapopohualoni in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).

The codex Sierra-Texupan includes a glyph or picture of napkins on a tablecloth and uses the term "nemapopoualoni."
https://bidilaf.buap.mx/objeto.xql?id=48281&busqueda=Texupan&action=search

zetetl nemapopovaloni = one hand towel (Cuernavaca region, ca. 1540s)
The Book of Tributes: Early Sixteenth-Century Nahuatl Censuses from Morelos, ed. and transl. S. L. Cline, (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1993), 120–121.

hatlei y nemapupoloni atlei totoli atlei totoltetl cacavatl y tlaoli atlei = No hand towels, no turkeys, no turkey eggs, cacao or shelled maize (Cuernavaca region, ca. 1540s)
The Book of Tributes: Early Sixteenth-Century Nahuatl Censuses from Morelos, ed. and transl. S. L. Cline, (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1993), 122–123.

themes:

Anatomy

Textiles, Clothing