pinahuiztli. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

pinahuiztli.

Principal English Translation:

shame; reprimand; timidity; bashfulness (see attestations); also, a beetle that was considered an omen (see Molina); perhaps a Jerusalem cricket, "cara de niño" cricket; a bug, a worm, or a cockroach (see attestations)

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 (pinahuiztli) 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.

pinahuiztli = "un tipo de grillo" = "cara de niño" = "a type of cricket"
The keywording team of the Digital Florentine Codex project. Sahagún, Bernardino de, Antonio Valeriano, Alonso Vegerano, Martín Jacobita, Pedro de San Buenaventura, Diego de Grado, Bonifacio Maximiliano, Mateo Severino, et al. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Florentine Codex), Ms. Mediceo Palatino 218–20, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, MiBACT, 1577. Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter, Alicia Maria Houtrouw, Kevin Terraciano, Jeanette Peterson, Diana Magaloni, and Lisa Sousa, bk. 11, fol. 225r. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/225r/images/0 . Accessed 5 January 2026.

"a bug or worm" (Digital Florentine Codex, Book 5, folio 8 verso); "...other cockroaches that they call pinahuiztli..." with an "ant-like shape but are as big as little mice" (Digital Florentine Codex, Book 11, folio 94 recto) (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/search?term=pinahuiztli&view=text

Attestations from sources in Spanish:

pinahuiztli = "una sabandija que le llaman pinahuiztli" "...que trata de agüero..."Digital Florentine Codex Book 1, folio xii verso (centro de México, siglo XVI)
https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/search?term=pinahuiztli&view=text

"otros cucarachos que llaman pinahuiztli"
Digital Florentine Codex Book 11, folio 94 recto (centro de México, siglo XVI)
https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/search?term=pinahuiztli&view=text

"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