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.

tlatilia.

Headword: 
tlatilia.
Principal English Translation: 

to take and guard something from someone else; to hide something from (or for) someone; or, to burn something that belongs to someone (see Molina)

Alonso de Molina: 

tlatilia. nic. (pret. onictlatili.) guardar algo a otro o esconderselo, o quemarle algo.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 136v. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English: 

This verb can be seen in Sahagún in conjunction with a deity's taking away someone's life, hiding that person: cujx ticmotlatiliz = perchance thou wilt hide him (central Mexico, sixteenth-century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, 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), 27.

auh noce mjtzonmotlatiliz, mjtzõmocxipachilviz, mjtzonmjvaliz in tocenchan in mjctlan = And perhaps he will hide thee, put thee underfoot, send thee to our common home, the land of the dead (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, 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), 33.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

yaotica omo tlan oqui motlatilili ynin yey altepetl huauquilpan acayocan sapotitlan sacamolpan tolquauyocan semicac ye altepe tlali = Con guerra se ganó todo esto, el dicho Señor, los conquistó a éstos tres pueblos: Huauhquilpan, Acayocan y Zapotitlan. Pues Zacamolpan (en tierras roturadas) y Tolcuauhyocan (lugar de juncos gordos) siempre serán tierras del pueblo. (Estado de Hidalgo, ca. 1722?)
Rocío Cortés, El "nahuatlato Alvarado" y el Tlalamatl Huauhquilpan: Mecanismos de la memoria colectiva de una comunidad indígena (New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, Colonial Spanish American Series, 2011), 30, 41.

themes: 
Religion (Christian)