⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-17 - Repairs are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

Some of our more complex, multi-field searches (such as the search field on our homepage and Search All Fields) are currently under repair and may not work as expected.

Thank you to all our users who emailed to alert us to the problem! We hope to have it repaired soon.

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

telchihua.

Headword: 
telchihua.
Principal English Translation: 

to curse, scorn, deprecate someone or something
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), 233.

Orthographic Variants: 
telchiua
IPAspelling: 
teltʃiːwɑ
Alonso de Molina: 

telchiua. (pret. nite. pret. onitetelchiuh.) menospreciar a otro.
telchiua tecanitla. teca onitlatelchiuh. abominar, maldezir y despreciar a otros con desdeny gran enojo.
telchiua. nitla. (pret. onitlatelchiuh.) abominar o maldezir alguna cosa.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 96r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

TELCHĪHU(A) vt to undervalue, dismiss, malign someone, something / menospreciar a otro (M), abominar o maldecir alguna cosa (M) See TELCHI-TL.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 220.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

Class 2: ōnictelchīuh. element tel- often with a negative connotation, chīhua. 233

Attestations from sources in English: 

telchihua (verb) = to detest, to hate, to curse
Daniel Garrison Brinton, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry: Containing the Nahuatl Text of XXVII Ancient Mexican Poems (1877), 162.

quimotelchihuilia yn tto dios. yn amo qualtin Cōfradias = Our Lord God despises the evil members of the cofradía
Fray Alonso de Molina, Nahua Confraternities in Early Colonial Mexico: The 1552 Nahuatl Ordinances of fray Alonso de Molina, OFM, ed. and trans., Barry D. Sell (Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2002), 90–91.

See also: