te-. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

te-.

Principal English Translation:

nonspecific human object prefix; also occurs as an impersonal possessive prefix to convey a generic sense: everyone in general, people (see Karttunen)

Orthographic Variants:

tē-

IPAspelling:

teː

Frances Karttunen:

TĒ- nonspecific human object prefix. By extension of its primary grammatical function, this nonspecific human prefix 'someone' appears as the initial element of many nouns derived from transitive verbs which take human objects, TĒMICTIĀNI 'murderer'< MICTIĀ 'to kill someone'; TĒMACHTIHQUI 'teacher'< MACHTIĀ 'to teach someone'; TĒCUILTŌNOHCĀN 'place of recreation, pleasure'< CUIL-TŌNOĀ 'to enrich someone' TĒ- also occurs as a possessive prefix to convey a generic sense as in M's tenantzin 'someone's mother'< NĀN-TLI, tepiltzin 'son or daughter of someone'< -PIL 'offspring/ P's tetátzin referring to God the Father, etc.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 215.

Horacio Carochi / English:

tē- = indefinite personal prefix
Horacio Carochi, S.J., Grammar of the Mexican language with an explanation of its adverbs (1645), translated and edited with commentary by James Lockhart, UCLA Latin American Studies Volume 89 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2001), 512.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:

indefinite personal obj. prefix. also indefinite personal possessive prefix of nouns.
James Lockhart, Nahuatl as Written: Lessons in Older Written Nahuatl, with Copious Examples and Texts (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Studies, 2001), 232.

Attestations from sources in English:

tē = "someone, people"; "someone's, people's"
Gordon Whittaker, Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs, 2021, 93.

Àmo tle tētōpco, tēcōmic, tēcaxic ticcuīz = You (s.) are not to take anything from (in) someone else's chest, jar or plate
Michel Launey, An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, translated and adapted by Christopher MacKay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 118.

This is the indefinite prefix that is used to refer to humans. E.g. nitēitta = I see people.
Michel Launey, An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, translated and adapted by Christopher MacKay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 29.

Àmo ticcuīz in tētlatqui = You are not to take anyone else's property
Michel Launey, An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, translated and adapted by Christopher MacKay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 96.

Attestations from sources in Spanish:

te = alquien, algunos, que se une a los sustantivos: ciuatl = mujer, teciuauh = la mujer de alguien
Rémi Siméon, Diccionario de la lengua náhuatl o mexicana (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1988), xliii.