nenequi. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

nenequi.

Principal English Translation:

to want, desire, crave, or covet; to feign; to pretend to be something one is not, to try to pass for someone else; to be capricious (see Karttunen)

Orthographic Variants:

nehnequi

IPAspelling:

nehneki

Alonso de Molina:

nenequi. nino. (pret. oninonenec.) hazerse de rogar, o contrahazer yarrendar alos de otra nacion.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 68r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

nenequi. nitla. (pret. oninonenec.) antojarseme algo, oser tirano.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 68r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

nenequi. ninococoxca. (pret. oninococoxcanenec.) fingirse enfermo.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 68r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

NEHNEQU(I) vrefl,vt to pretend to be something one is not, to try to pass for someone else; to get a craving for something, to be capricious / hacerse de rogar, o contrahacer y arrendar a los de otra nación (M), antojárseme algo, o ser tirano (M for first pers. sg. subject) The reflexive form incorporates the name of what one is posing as, NINOCOCOXCĀNEQUI 'I pretend to be someone sick.' See NEQU(I).
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 162.

Horacio Carochi / English:

nènequi = to imagine, pretend
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.

Attestations from sources in English:

nenequi (verb) = to act tyrannically; to feign; to covet
Daniel Garrison Brinton, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry: Containing the Nahuatl Text of XXVII Ancient Mexican Poems (1877), 159.

Attestations from sources in Spanish:

mococoxcanenec = pretexto que estaba enferma (Tlatelolco, 1573)
Luis Reyes García, Eustaquio Celestino Solís, Armando Valencia Ríos, et al, Documentos nauas de la Ciudad de México del siglo XVI (México: Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social y Archivo General de la Nación, 1996), 89.