otlatl. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

otlatl.

Principal English Translation:

bamboo; cane stalk(s); a stout cane; reed(s) (see Molina, Sahagún, and Karttunen)

Orthographic Variants:

utlatl

IPAspelling:

otɬɑtɬ

Alonso de Molina:

otlatl. caña maciza y rezia.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 78r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

OTLA-TL bamboo / caña maciza y recia (M) [(1)Tp.169,(2)Zp.92,180]. In one attestation Z has both vowels long, the first followed by the reflex of a glottal stop (a phonologically impermissible sequence), whereas T has both vowels short.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 180.

Attestations from sources in English:

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

ca yehhuatl ic pepenalo, in cualli itlachieliz, in mimatqui, in mimatini, in chipahuac inacayo, cuillotic, acatic, piaztic, iuhquin otlatl, ipanoca temimiltic, amo
tlacazolnacayo, amo tomahuac, amo no tete... = indeed he who was thus chosen was of fair countenance, of good understanding, quick, of clean body, slender, reed-like, long and thin, like a stout cane, like a stone column all over, not of overfed body, not corpulent, nor very small, nor exceedingly tall. (b.2 f.2 p.65)
Joe Campbell, Nahuat-L Discussion List, Facebook, December 27, 2016.

utlatl tzotzopaztli = cane stalks; battens
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 207.

bamboo (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Frances F. Berdan and Paricia Reiff Anawalt, The Essential Codex Mendoza (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), v. 2, 100.