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poxacuatl.

Headword: 
poxacuatl.
Principal English Translation: 

Mexican Whippoorwill, a bird (see Hunn, attestations); also, a stupid or incipient person

Orthographic Variants: 
poxaquatl, puxacuatl, puxaquatl, poxacua, poxaqua
Alonso de Molina: 

poxaqua. dormilon.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 83v. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English: 

POXACUA-TL, (literally, “stupid,” Mexican Whip-poor-will (Antrostomus arizonae)” [FC: 46 Poxaquatl] “It is like the barn owl ; it looks like the barn owl. It is small, fluffy. As it flies, it only goes about flying erratically. Hence it is called poxaquatl. Dark yellow, dark yellow on the surface of its feathers.” This is certainly the Mexican Whip-poor-will (Antrostomus arizonae).
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 11 – Earthly Things, no. 14, Part XII, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1963); and, with quotation selections, synthesis, and analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.

For a painting of this bird, see the Florentine Codex.
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 50r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/50r/images/36716f1d-6... Accessed 18 October 2025.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

Puxaquatl/poxacuatl/cierta aue nocherniega, o tonto e insipiente.
Gran Diccionario del Náhuatl, https://gdn.iib.unam.mx/diccionario/poxacuatl/217660.

themes: 
Animals, Bugs, Insects, Reptiles, Fish, etc.
Behavior, Personality
Colors
Feathers