tlacomolli. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

tlacomolli.

Principal English Translation:

large pit, ravine, hole in the earth (see Molina and Karttunen), might also have referred to a type of soil (see attestations)

IPAspelling:

tɬɑkomoːlli

Alonso de Molina:

tlacomolli. hoyo grande o barranco.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 118v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

TLACOMŌL-LI large pit, ravine, hole in the earth / hoyo grande o barranco (M) [(3)Zp.95,99,204]. The vowel of the last syllable is marked long in only one of three attestations. M has comoloa ‘to make holes, ravines’. See COMŌL-LI…
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 256.

Attestations from sources in English:

See an image that represents tlacomolli in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).

tlacomule = level land soils in Alta, Puebla (twentieth century)
Barbara J. Williams and Carlos Ortiz-Solorio, "Middle American Folk Soil Taxonomy," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 71:3 (September 1981), 335–358. See p. 346.

Attestations from sources in Spanish:

huel onpa tlantica yn canpa ca huey tlacomonli = llega hasta el hoyo grande (Tlatelolco, 1609)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVII, vol. 3, Teresa Rojas Rabiela, et al, eds. (México: CIESAS, 2002), 72–73.

themes:

Alcohol, Hallucinogens

Landscape Features