ocotl. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

ocotl.

Principal English Translation:

pine, especially high in pitch; fatwood; a torch

Orthographic Variants:

ocutl

IPAspelling:

okotɬ

Alonso de Molina:

ocotl. tea, raja o astilla de pino.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 75v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

OCO-TL pine tree; torch made of pine / tea, raja o astilla de pino (M), ocote (árbol) (Z) Z marks the vowel of the second syllable long, and it is so marked in half the attestations in X, but other sources have it consistently short.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 176.

Attestations from sources in English:

The ocotl (translated as a pine tree) is described in Nahuatl and translated to Spanish and English in the DFC, but the image on f. 112r is of a different tree, the ayauhcuahuitl. Part of the description: "It is a provider of light, a means of seeing, a resinous torch." (SW)
Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 112r, Sahagún, Bernardino de. Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain. Transcribed and translated with notes by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble. 2nd rev. ed. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research / University of Utah Press, 1950–82. Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/112r?spTexts=&nhTexts= Accessed 11 November 2025.

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

ocotlapaqui in itequiuh naui tomi = The pine-torch splitters' tax is 4 tomines (Coyoacan, mid-sixteenth cent.)
Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), Doc. 25, 142–143.

in tomavac ocutl in apocio in cemanaoac tlavia, tlanextia = the thick torch, the clear one which lighteth, illumineth the world (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), 44.

tlatlatiuh in ocutl = The pine torch went on burning (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), 204.

in nanti, in tati, in jxeque, in nacaceque, in iolloque, in tlaviltin, in ocome, in tezcame = the mothers, the fathers, the discreet, the able, [who are] the candles, the torches, the mirrors (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), 216.

Attestations from sources in Spanish:

yc ocoaz ocotzintli = y con [ese dinero] hay que comprar ocote (en un testamento modelo, imaginado; México central, s. XVII temprano)
Martín de León, Camino al cielo en lengua mexicana (Mexico: Diego López, 1611), f. 139v. Traducción de esta frase por Stephanie Wood.

themes:

Fire, Tobacco, Incense

Wood, wooden material