tlapani. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

tlapani.

Principal English Translation:

for something to break; or, a person who dyes cloth (see Molina and Karttunen)

IPAspelling:

tɬɑpɑːni

Alonso de Molina:

tlapani. (pret. otlapan.) quebrarse algo, o el tintorero que tiñe paños.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 131r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

TLAPĀN(I) for something like pottery or eggshells to break into pieces / quebrarse algo (M), quebrarse vasijas de barro, tecomates, o otras cosas delicadas (C) M combines this verb in a single entry with TLAPĀNI ‘someone who dyes cloth.’ See TLAPĀN(A).

TLAPĀNŌ nonact. TLAPĀN(I).

TLAPĀNI someone, something that dyes cloth / el tintorero que tiñe paños (M), M combines this in a single gloss with the verb TLAPĀN(I) ‘for something to break into pieces.’ It is not directly attested in the sources for this dictionary, but the basic verb TLAPĀ is.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 290.

Attestations from sources in English:

tlapani (verb) = to dye, to color
Daniel Garrison Brinton, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry: Containing the Nahuatl Text of XXVII Ancient Mexican Poems (1877), 165.

tlapāni = to break, to split (colonial Mexico)
Michel Launey, An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, translated and adapted by Christopher MacKay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 197.

tlapani = it breaks (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), 109.

themes:

Occupations, Responsibilities

Textiles, Clothing