⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-17 - Repairs are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

Some of our more complex, multi-field searches (such as the search field on our homepage and Search All Fields) are currently under repair and may not work as expected.

Thank you to all our users who emailed to alert us to the problem! We hope to have it repaired soon.

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

tlatzinia.

Headword: 
tlatzinia.
Principal English Translation: 

to hit or spank someone (see Karttunen)

Orthographic Variants: 
tlatzīnīa
IPAspelling: 
tɬɑtsiːniːɑ
Frances Karttunen: 

TLATZĪNĪA vt to hit or spank someone / le pega, le da sus nalgadas (T) [(3)Tp.210]. See TLATZĪN(I).
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 302.

Attestations from sources in English: 

motlatzinia = it sputters (referring to a noise of the tongue) (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), 107.

quixtlatzinia = he slaps the face (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), 112.

themes: 
Crime, Punishment
War, Conflict