⚠ 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.

toctli.

Headword: 
toctli.
Principal English Translation: 

a stalk, or a cane of maize (see Molina and Karttunen); Molina says that it is a young plant that has not yet flowered, but the glyph for toctli in the Codex Mendoza does show a flower and ears of corn on the plant

IPAspelling: 
toːktɬi
Alonso de Molina: 

toctli. porreta o mata de mayz, antes que espigue.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 148v. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

TŌC-TLI young maize plant, stalk, or cane / porreta o mata de maíz antes que espigue (M), la caña (C) see TŌCA.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 243.

Attestations from sources in English: 

mochioaya ilhuiquixtililoya in toctli = It was performed, it was celebrated in honor of the maize plant.
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 58.

“One is composed of the green maize stalk (toctli) and the ideograph for water (atl), which translates as atoctli, a ‘fertile, water-borne soil’ (i.e., alluvium) (Sahagún, 1963, p. 251; Seler, 1904, p. 205).” (p. 5)
Barbara J. Williams, "Pictorial Representation of Soils in the Valley of Mexico: Evidence from the Codex Vergara," Geoscience and Man 21 (1980), 51–62.njman ic vmpeoa, yn jnmjlpan, cinteuanazque, yn izqujcan manj inmil, yn itech, yn ipan cecentetl milli, cecen cantiuj in toctli = Then they departed to their fields, to get the maize god[dess]. In as many places as lay fields, from each field they got a stalk of green maize. (16th century, Mexico City)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 2—The Ceremonies, No. 14, Part III, 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, 1951), 60.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

yquac titonalhuaque huel mochi huahuac toctli çe meztica yn amo quiauh = En ese entonces sufrimos una gran sequía. Todas la siembra se secó, durante un mes no llovió (Tlaxcala, 1662–1692)
Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, Historia cronológica de la Noble Ciudad de Tlaxcala, transcripción paleográfica, traducción, presentación y notas por Luis Reyes García y Andrea Martínez Baracs (Tlaxcala y México: Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, Secretaría de Extensión Universitaria y Difusión Cultural, y Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, 1995), 266–267.

intoctli = el mayz
Pedro de Arenas, Vocabulario Manual de las Lenguas Castellana, y Mexicana (Mexico: Henrico Martínez, 1611), 9.