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.

tlaximalli.

Headword: 
tlaximalli.
Principal English Translation: 

hewn timber, beams; wood chips; wood shavings; splinters

IPAspelling: 
tɬɑʃiːmɑlli
Alonso de Molina: 

tlaximalli. astillas, o acepilladuras largas.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 146r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English: 

tlaximalli = wood chips and shavings (many of the shavings the image are swirling); tlaximalli is also called cuauhtlaximalli and tlaxhimallotl (SW)
Sahagún, Bernardino de, Antonio Valeriano, Alonso Vegerano, Martín Jacobita, Pedro de San Buenaventura, Diego de Grado, Bonifacio Maximiliano, Mateo Severino, et al. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Florentine Codex), Ms. Mediceo Palatino 218–20, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, MiBACT, 1577. Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter, Alicia Maria Houtrouw, Kevin Terraciano, Jeanette Peterson, Diana Magaloni, and Lisa Sousa, bk. 11, fol. 120r. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/120r?spTexts=&nhTexts= . Accessed 12 November 2025.

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

tlaxīmalli = "wood beams evened with a plane"
Berenice Alcántara and Pedro A. Muñoz, "'You Here, Don't Do It This Way': Allegory and Domestic Dwellings in Bernardino de Sahagún's Nahuatl Sermons of the House," Ethnohistory 71:2 (April 2024), see p. 151.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

mopia tlaximalli chiuhcnaui yc moquachichiua calli = tengo nueve vigas nuevas con que se techan las casas (Cholula, 1599)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 2, Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVI, eds., Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, Constantino Medina Lima (Mexico: Consejo Nacional de Ciencias Tecnología, 1999), 322–323.

themes: 
Architecture, Construction, Buildings
Wood, wooden material