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.

tlillotl.

Headword: 
tlillotl.
Principal English Translation: 

blackness (see Karttunen); seemingly, this term can also refer to writings (in black ink) (see attestations)

Orthographic Variants: 
tlīllōtl
IPAspelling: 
tɬiːlloːtɬ
Frances Karttunen: 

TLĪLLŌ-TL blackness / negrura (C) [(1)Cf.53r]. See TLĪL-LI, YŌ.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 308.

Attestations from sources in English: 

Ayc polihuiz ayc ylcahuiz. yn oquichihuaco yn oquitlallico yn intlillo yn intlapallo yn intenyo yn imitolloca yn imilnamicoca. (Codex Chimalpahin [CC], f. 18v) = And what they came to do, what they came to establish, their writings, their renown, their history, their memory will never perish, will never be forgotten in times to come. (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:61)
Ezequiel G. Stear, Nahua Horizons: Writing, Persuasion, and Futurities in Colonial Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2025), 149.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

tlillotl = negrura
Rémi Siméon, Diccionario de la lengua náhuatl o mexicana (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1996), xxxvii.

themes: 
Colors