Principal English Translation:
something made up, invented, created falsely, pretended; a lie; also, something wrapped in corn husks, such as a tamale
Alonso de Molina:
tlapictli. hechura, o criatura, o cosa criada, fingida, o cosa embuelta en hojas de mayz, assi como tamalli. &c. o almario hecho en lo hueco de la pared.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 132r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:
something falsely invented, made up. usually used in an adverbial sense, preceded by çan, meaning for false reasons, without good reason. in this sense also loses its absolutive ending and acts like a particle. çan tlapīc. patientive noun from pīqui.
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), 238.
Attestations from sources in English:
ca miequintin in tlapictli quitzacutiaque in ixpopoiomictiloque = they punished many for invented things, who were treacherously killed (Mexico City, sixteenth century)
James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Repertorium Columbianum v. 1 (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1993), 142.