Headword:
in quen macuil, in quen matlac.
Principal English Translation:
for a little time
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, 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, 1961), 52.
Orthographic Variants:
in quen macujl, in quen matlac
Attestations from sources in English:
macuil matlac = in the future;
ye macuil matlac = in the past;
notice the roots of the numbers macuilli (five) and matlactli (ten) (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Personal communication, James Lockhart, in sessions analyzing Huehuetlatolli.