⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-06

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.

-pan.

Headword: 
-pan.
Principal English Translation: 

in the time of; or a locative suffix meaning on, at, or in; over, on top of; with, by means of; for, in favor of; about (see Karttunen and Lockhart)

IPAspelling: 
-pɑn
Frances Karttunen: 

-PAN postposition on the surface of, for or at a particular time / dentro, sobre, en, durante, por (S) Z consistently has a long vowel, while there is agreement across other sources that the vowel is short.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 186.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

relational word. in, on, for, during, as, place of or among, etc.
-pan tlahtoa, to see to, take care of, be in charge of, sometimes to speak for.
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), 229.

Attestations from sources in English: 

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

in yquac cocoliztli inpan, ohuala? = when some sickness came upon them
Bartolomé de Alva, A Guide to Confession Large and Small in the Mexican Language, 1634, eds. Barry D. Sell and John Frederick Schwaller, with Lu Ann Homza (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 101.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

in yquac cocoliztli inpan, ohuala? = estando enfermos
Bartolomé de Alva, A Guide to Confession Large and Small in the Mexican Language, 1634, eds. Barry D. Sell and John Frederick Schwaller, with Lu Ann Homza (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 100–101.

tlalpan = en la tierra
nopan = en mí, sobre mí, por mí
ohpan = en el camino (de ohtli)
mopantzinco = en tí
calpan = en la casa
-pantzinco = (reverencia de pan)
amopan = sobre ustedes
ipan = sobre él/ella
impan = sobre ellos
Rebecca Horn's notes from Nahuatl study sessions with James Lockhart in the late 1970s and early 1980s.