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tlatzihui.

Headword: 
tlatzihui.
Principal English Translation: 

to be idle, to be lazy, slothful (see also Karttunen)

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), 239.

Orthographic Variants: 
tlatziui
IPAspelling: 
tɬɑtsiwi
Alonso de Molina: 

tlatziui. ni. (pret. onitlatziuh.) tener pereza, o ser perezoso.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 143r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

TLATZIHU(I) to be lazy, slothful, idle / tener pereza o ser perezoso (M). TLATZIHUĪTIĀ caus. TLATZIHU(I).
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 301.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

ni. Class 2: ōnitlatziuh.
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), 239.

Attestations from sources in English: 

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

tlatzihui (verb) = to neglect, to be negligent; to be abandoned, to lie fallow; to leave, to withdraw
Daniel Garrison Brinton, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry: Containing the Nahuatl Text of XXVII Ancient Mexican Poems (1877), 165.

mahmana tlatzihui = get upset, grow weary (suggesting a possible alternate translation of a passage from the Cantares Mexicanos, Bierhorst, 228–29, verse 4)
James Lockhart, Nahuas and Spaniards: Postconquest Central Mexican History and Philology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 147.

ayac tlatziuhtinemiz = no one lives [or, is to live] in idleness (Codex Osuna, 1565)
James Lockhart, The Nahuas after the Conquest (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 342.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

Cuix otitlatziuh? = Tuviste pereza?
Antonio Vázquez Gastelu, Arte de lengua mexicana (Puebla de los Angeles, México: Imprenta Nueva de Diego Fernández de León, 1689), 38v.

"Tlatzihuitl, o Tlatziuhque, 425, perezoso, y también tlatziuhca, perezosamente, o tlatziuhcayotl, pereza"
Manuel Orozco y Berra, Historia antigua y de la conquista de México: 1.pte. (1960), 399.

See also: