⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-06

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.

tetlanochili.

Headword: 
tetlanochili.
Principal English Translation: 

a procurer or a procuress (see Molina)

Alonso de Molina: 

tetlanochili. alcahuete, o alcahueta.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 109r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English: 

in tetlanochili, ca uel tlacateculotl, ca uel iitic nemi, uel quimonaoaltia, uel inaoal in tzitzimitl, in coleletli, in teiztlacauiani, uel iix, uel inacaz, uel ititlan in diablo, in tzitzimitl. = The procuress is verily a demon. [The devil] truly dwells within her, truly hides within her. Hers is truly the disguise of the demon of the air, of the devil. The deceiver is really the eyes, the ears -- the messenger -- of the devil, of the demon of the air. (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 10 -- The People, No. 14, Part 11, 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), 57.