⚠ 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.

tepotztli.

Headword: 
tepotztli.
Principal English Translation: 

the back, the shoulders

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), 234.

Orthographic Variants: 
teputztli
IPAspelling: 
tepotstɬi
Frances Karttunen: 

TEPOTZ-TLI back, shoulders / trasera o espalda de persona (M).
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 231.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

yn itepotz namatl auh yn iyomotlan yematl = por las espaldas tiene quatro brazas e por el lado tiene tres brazas (Ciudad de México, 1564)
Luis Reyes García, Eustaquio Celestino Solís, Armando Valencia Ríos, et al, Documentos nauas de la Ciudad de México del siglo XVI (México: Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social y Archivo General de la Nación, 1996), 110.

themes: