Principal English Translation:
a difficult, dangerous place to get around in; also, such a situation
James Lockhart, Nahuatl as Written: Lessons in Older Written Nahuatl, with Copious Examples and Texts (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Studies, 2001), 228.
Alonso de Molina:
ouican. lugar dificultoso y peligroso, o escondrijo de fieras, o lugar espantoso.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 78r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
Frances Karttunen:
OHUIHCĀN dangerous place, situation / lugar dificultoso y peligroso, o escondrijo de fieras, o lugar oscuro y espantoso (M) [(1)Bf.11r,(1)Zp.180]. See OHUIH, -CAN.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 177.
Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:
Attestations from sources in English:
in tecococan, in temamauhtican in tetzauhohuican = in the place of torment, in the place of fright, in the place of ominous danger (early sixteenth century, Central Mexico)
Louise M. Burkhart, Before Guadalupe: The Virgin Mary in Early Colonial Nahuatl Literature, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Monograph 13 (Albany: University at Albany, 2001), 127.