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quechcotona.

Headword: 
quechcotona.
Principal English Translation: 

break the neck, and, by extension, to cut off someone's head or decapitate someone; and see attestations for additional translations

James Lockhart, The Nahuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 460 note 9.

Orthographic Variants: 
quechcotōna
IPAspelling: 
ketʃkotoːnɑ
Alonso de Molina: 

quechcotona. nite. (pret. onitequechcoton.) degollar, o cortar la cabeza a otro.
quechcotona. nitla. (pret. onitlaquechcoton.) coger espigas, o cosa semejante conla mano.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 88r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

QUECHCOTŌN(A) vt to cut off the head of someone or something / degollar, o cortar la cabeza a otro (M), coger espigas o cosa semejante con la mano (M) See QUECH-TLI, COTŌN(A).
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 206.

Attestations from sources in English: 

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

çan quechcotonalloque cenpohuallonchiuhiuhcnahui yn omoteneuhque mimicque auh yn intzonteco oncan tepilolcuauhticpac quinçaçalloque, auh yn intlacnacayo oncan quincallaquique yn contadoria tlatzĩtla = 29 of the said dead were only decapitated and their heads stuck on top of the gallows. They put their torsos in the royal accounting office, down below. (central Mexico, 1612)
Annals of His Time: Don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, James Lockhart, Susan Schroeder, and Doris Namala, eds. and transl. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 224–225.

yn oquechcotonalloque. omentin tlahtoque Alonso davilla. yhuan yteyccauh Gil goçales aluarado. yaoyotl yntech tlah quichihuazquia. yuh mito macocuizquia. yn ipampa quitzauhtiaque. = the two lords Alonso de Avila and his younger sibling Gil González de Alvarado were decapitated. They were accused of being about to make war. It was said that they were going to rebel, for which they paid the penalty. (1608, Central Mexico)
Annals of His Time: Don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, James Lockhart, Susan Schroeder, and Doris Namala, eds. and transl. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 138–139.

Also seen defined in relation to the ritual sacrifice of an animal.
Alexis Wimmer, Dictionnaire de la langue nahuatl classique, http://sites.estvideo.net/malinal/q/nahuatlQ.html.

To cut or harvest fruits, flowers, etc.
Rémi Siméon, Diccionario de la lengua náhuatl o mexicana (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1996), 647.

And: to pick an ear of grain with one's hand.
Robert Calasso, William Weaver, and Stephen Sartarelli, The Ruin of Kasch (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 135.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

nican moyolcuep quiquechcotoque y cepan don Alonso de Avila don Pedro. = que aquí se había rebelado. Decapitaron juntos a don Alonso Dávila y a don Pedro [Quezada]. (Tlaxcala, 1662–1692)
Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, Historia cronológica de la Noble Ciudad de Tlaxcala, transcripción paleográfica, traducción, presentación y notas por Luis Reyes García y Andrea Martínez Baracs (Tlaxcala and México: Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, Secretaría de Extensión Universitaria y Difusión Cultural, y Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, 1995), 166–167.

Oy sabado [Sobre el renglón: sabado] a tres dias del mes de ag[ost]o de 1566 yquac quechcotonaloque yn Alonso Davilla yhuan yteiccauh Gilli Gonçalis Davilla = Hoy sábado a tres días del mes de agosto de 1566, entonces fueron decapitados Alonso Dávila y su hermano menor Gil González Dávila (ca. 1582, México)
Luis Reyes García, ¿Como te confundes? ¿Acaso no somos conquistados? Anales de Juan Bautista (México: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Biblioteca Lorenzo Boturini Insigne y Nacional Basílica de Guadalupe, 2001), 150–151.

themes: 
Anatomy
Religion (Indigenous)
War, Conflict