pinahuiztli. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

pinahuiztli.

Principal English Translation:

shame; reprimand; timidity; bashfulness (see attestations); also, a beetle that was considered an omen (see Molina)

Orthographic Variants:

pinauiztli, pinaviztli

IPAspelling:

piːnɑːwistɬi

Alonso de Molina:

pinauiztli. cierto escarauajo que tenian por aguero.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 82r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

PĪNĀHUIZ-TLI shame, embarrassment / vergüenza (M) [(I)Bf.9v]. See PĪNĀHUIA.

Attestations from sources in English:

According to Louise Burkhart, the friars adopted this term as an equivalent for shame (vergüenza), "using it in the sense of public reprimand, which indeed seems an accurate interpretation."
Louise Burkhart, The Slippery Earth: Nahuatl-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (1989), 32.

y pinaviztli yn otlica oquinamic anoço calli oquittac mitoaya aço cana teixpã ayoz pinauhtiloz = [When someone] encountered a beetle on the road or saw it [in] the house, it was said that perhaps somewhere he would be reprehended before people, he would be shamed.
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 175.

Attestations from sources in Spanish:

tictolhuiya cequi pinviztlatolly = le decimos algunas palabras vergonsosas (Tlaxcala, 1563)
Catálogo de documentos escritos en náhuatl, siglo XVI, vol. I (Tlaxcala: Gobierno del Estado de Tlaxcala y el Archivo Histórico del Estado de Tlaxcala, 2013), 27.

themes:

Animals, Bugs, Insects, Reptiles, Fish, etc.

Behavior, Personality