⚠ 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.

tepitonoa.

Headword: 
tepitonoa.
Principal English Translation: 

to make small

Frances Karttunen and James Lockhart, Nahuatl in the Middle Years: Language Contact Phenomena in Texts of the Colonial Period, Linguistics 85 (Los Angeles, University of California Publications, 1976), 135.

IPAspelling: 
tepitoːnoɑ
Alonso de Molina: 

tepitonoa. nino. (pret. oninotepitono.) achicarse, o tornarse pequeño.
tepitonoa. nitla. (pret. onitlatepitono.) acortar, o achicar algo.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 103r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English: 

in itlamátilihtzin Dios ámo motepitonoa. noço mohueylia = the wisdom of God does not become small, nor does it increase (late seventeenth century, Central Mexico)
Louise M. Burkhart, Before Guadalupe: The Virgin Mary in Early Colonial Nahuatl Literature, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Monograph 13 (Albany: University at Albany, 2001), 39.

in ocuilton in teuhtontli, iuhqui ypampa motepitonotzino mahttletilitzino = the little worm, the fine dust, he became small, he became nothing (early seventeenth century, Central Mexico)
Louise M. Burkhart, Before Guadalupe: The Virgin Mary in Early Colonial Nahuatl Literature, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Monograph 13 (Albany: University at Albany, 2001), 57.