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tlayohuayan.

Headword: 
tlayohuayan.
Principal English Translation: 

in the place and/or time of darkness

Louise M. Burkhart, Holy Wednesday: A Nahua Drama from Early Colonial Mexico (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 223.

Orthographic Variants: 
tlayuayan
IPAspelling: 
tɬɑyowɑyɑːn
Alonso de Molina: 

tlayuayan. lugar o en lugar escuro ytenebroso.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 122v. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

TLAYOHUAYĀN obscurity, place of darkness / en tinieblas (C), obscuridad, obscuro (Z) [(1)Cf.99r, (3)Zp.90,218]. See TLAYOHUA, -YĀN.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 305.

Attestations from sources in English: 

In the Nahua-Christian literature this term could refer to "dark underworlds but also to the time before the creation of the world, the time before the coming of Mary or Christ, the time before the coming of Christianity to the Nahuas, the state of idolatry or paganhood, and the state of sin. It is also applied to Limbo in the Psalmodia."
Louise M. Burkhart, Holy Wednesday: A Nahua Drama from Early Colonial Mexico (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 223–224.