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xacalli.

Headword: 
xacalli.
Principal English Translation: 

a hut (Cline); a house of poles and thatch (Karttunen and Molina)
S. L. Cline, Colonial Culhuacan, 1580-1600: A Social History of an Aztec Town (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), 236.

xahcalli entered Spanish as jacal (Stephanie Wood, Editor)

Orthographic Variants: 
xahcalli, xacali, sacali
IPAspelling: 
ʃɑhkɑlli
Alonso de Molina: 

xacalli. choza, bohio o casa de paja
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 158r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

XAHCAL-LI jacal, house of poles and thatch / choza, bohío o casa de paja (M) See CAL-LI.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 321.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

hut (made of thatch). seems to contain calli.
James Lockhart, Nahuatl as Written: Lessons in Older Written Nahuatl, with Copious Examples and Texts (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Studies, 2001), 241.

Attestations from sources in English: 

nauhtel yn huehuey calli yn nenecoc mamacuilmatl yhuan ca quezquitetl yn huehuey xacalli yvan yn acalcuezcomatl yvan yz cequi çan pilolcuezcomatl = four very large houses each [measuring] five matl across, large straw-roofed houses, and subterranean [?] granaries and some only subsidiary [?] granaries (central Mexico, early seventeenth century)
Codex Chimalpahin: Society and Politics in Mexico Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Culhuacan, and Other Nahuatl Altepetl in Central Mexico; The Nahuatl and Spanish Annals and Accounts Collected and Recorded by don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), vol. 2, 210–211.

in xacalli yn oncan monoltitoca yn piltzintli tot.º Jesu xp̄ō = the straw hut where the child our Lord Jesus Christ was lying (central Mexico, early seventeenth century)
Codex Chimalpahin: Society and Politics in Mexico Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Culhuacan, and Other Nahuatl Altepetl in Central Mexico; The Nahuatl and Spanish Annals and Accounts Collected and Recorded by don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), vol. 2, 146–147.

mochica yn ixacal totlatiCatiCa = together with the straw hut on it;
ma xitechmomaquixtilitzino yn ihui[. . .]pa y toAhua = save us from our enemies (San Bartolomé Tlatelolco, Toluca Valley, 1715)
Caterina Pizzigoni, ed., Testaments of Toluca (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2007), 92.

xacalli = a hut
xacaltontli = a small hut (also seen as xacaltotli)
Susan Kellogg, Law and the Transformation of Aztec Culture, 1500–1700 (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 228.

miec xacali oquecatocti = many thatch huts were blown away by the wind
Here in This Year: Seventeenth-Century Nahuatl Annals of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Valley, ed. and transl. Camilla Townsend, with an essay by James Lockhart (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 144–145.

xacalli = casa paxiza = straw house (central Mexico, sixteenth century, no lates than the 1570s)
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. 243r. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/243r . Accessed 2 February 2026..

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

a 6 de abrir 1631 Chicomilhuitl yeecac huel chicahuac ayc yuhqui mochihuani quimamayauh quahuitl yhuan xacali teopancali quihuicac quapetlacali cabila = 6 de abril de 1631, que durante siete días corrió viento muy fuerte, nunca se había visto así. Tumbó árboles y se llevó el jacal del templo, el armazón de madera de la capilla. (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), 250–251.

centetl sacali = un jacale (Santa Bárbara Tamasolco, 1585)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 1, Testamentos en castellano del siglo XVI y en náhuatl y castellano de Ocotelulco de los siglos XVI y XVII, eds. Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, y Constantino Medina Lima (Mexico: CIESAS, 1999), 256-257.

oyetetl caltin centetlapancali ontetl xacaltin yoan in calacuemitl ypan mani tlapalnopali yoan metl ypan onoc yoan capolime yan onoc yoan capolime = dos aposentos, los de terrado y otro de jacale, y encima de la tierra [solariega] hay nopales de grana y magueyes y árboles de capulín (San Bartolomé Tenango, 1585)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 1, Testamentos en castellano del siglo XVI y en náhuatl y castellano de Ocotelulco de los siglos XVI y XVII, eds. Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, y Constantino Medina Lima (Mexico: CIESAS, 1999), 250–251.

auh huehue xacalli q'[ui]quetzque in tianq'[ui]zco mundo ycpac quitlalique yhuan q'[ui]uhtin = Y un jacal antiguo erigieron en el mercado, le pusieron encima un mundo y las lluvias. [i.e. los cuatro vientos] (ca. 1582, México)
Luis Reyes García, ¿Como te confundes? ¿Acaso no somos conquistados? Anales de Juan Bautista (Mexico: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Biblioteca Lorenzo Boturini Insigne y Nacional Basílica de Guadalupe, 2001), 142–143.

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