⚠ 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.

on.

Headword: 
on.
Principal English Translation: 

1) that, that one, a pronoun that demonstrates (see Lockhart)
2) directional particle meaning "away" or "at a distance" (see Molina)

Alonso de Molina: 

on. es particula que se junta a verbos para significar distancia de lugar, o por via, o manera de ornato y buen sonido.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 77r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

demonstrative pronoun. 228
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.

Attestations from sources in English: 

The directional particle on can also relate to time, as in thinking forward into the future. The other directional, hual, too, can express a sense of time, as in "back into time."
Also, "in some dialects" the expression on "represents a reverential (derived from the idea of distance)."
Rebecca Horn's notes from Nahuatl classes with James Lockhart at UCLA. Card file in the possession of Stephanie Wood.