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.

tzotzoyoca.

Headword: 
tzotzoyoca.
Principal English Translation: 

to sizzle; for something to make a sound as it is frying

IPAspelling: 
tsotsojokɑ
Alonso de Molina: 

tzotzoyoca. (pret. otzotzoyocac.) hazer ruido lo que se frie.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 154r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English: 

auh in inacaio Motecuçoma, iuhquin tzotzoiocatoc, yoan tzoiaia inic tlatla = And Moteucçoma's body lay sizzling, and it lay off a stench as it burned (Mexico City, sixteenth century)James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Repertorium Columbianum v. 1 (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1993), 150.

themes: 
Food, Eating, Cooking
Sensory Perception (sound, smell, etc.)