Search Issues: Update 2026-09-16 - Repairs to some of our search pages are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

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

tlacopintli.

Headword: 
tlacopintli.
Principal English Translation: 

a container for seed, a unit of dry measure of the pre-contact era (i.e. before European colonization), larger than the Spanish fanega, and the amount of produce it will provide

IPAspelling: 
tɬɑkopiːntɬi
Attestations from sources in English: 

"Each tlacopintli equals 93 bushels."
Stuart Struever, Prehistoric Agriculture (Washington, D.C.: American Museum of Natural History; Natural History Press, 1971), 522

"...somewhere between 125 and 140 lb."
Warwick Bray, Everyday Life of the Aztecs (1991), 112.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

Una posibilidad: segun Ixtlilxochitl, "...cada tlacopintli tenía tres almudes más de una fanega." Pero Boban dice que el tlacompixtli es el "equivalente indígena de la fanega o sea 54 litros aproximadamente." Y copichtli = acucharada o acanalada.
Víctor M. Castillo F., "Unidades nahuas de medida," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 10 (1972), 195–223, ver la página 205.

themes: 
Measurements, Quantities