Search Issues: Update 2026-09-16 - Repairs to some of our search pages are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

tamaloa.

Headword: 
tamaloa.
Principal English Translation: 

to make tamales

Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 252.

IPAspelling: 
tɑmɑloɑː
Alonso de Molina: 

tamaloa. ni. (pret. onitamalo.) hazer este pan. s. tamales.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 90v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

TAMALOĀ to make tamales / hacer este pan, tamales (M) This is implied by TAMALŌLIZ-TLI.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 214.

Attestations from sources in English: 

yyoloco nemi çiuatl tlamachioa. etc. çiuatl tlamachioa. etc. çiuatlapalivi. tezi. tamaloa. tlaqualchioa = Grown maiden: She embroiders, etc. Young marriageable maiden: She grinds maize, she makes tamales, she prepares food. (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 252.

Niman ie ic tamaloa, cacaoatexo, muchichioa in molli = Then tamales were prepared, chocolate was ground, sauces were prepared (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
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), 127.

themes: 
Food, Eating, Cooking