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.

xalmoyotl.

Headword: 
xalmoyotl.
Principal English Translation: 

a type of small mosquito (see Karttunen); a biting midge, a biting gnat, or a sandfly, found at the coast (DFC, which includes an image and a Nahuatl-language description)
Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 109r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/109r/images/0 Accessed 11 November 2025.

Orthographic Variants: 
xālmōyōtl
IPAspelling: 
ʃɑːlmoːyoːtɬ
Frances Karttunen: 

XĀLMŌYŌ-TL pl: -MEH a type of small mosquito / zancudo de arena, mosquito chico (X) [(3)Xp.102]. The literal meaning of this is ‘sand fly.’ See XĀL-LI, MŌYŌ-TL.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 321.

Attestations from sources in English: 

In Nahuatl hieroglyphs, the moyotl (mosquito) can sometimes look more like a fly (zayolin). The proboscis varies from a straight one, which could more likely penetrate human skin, to a curled one. See the search results for moyotl in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs. (SW)

themes: 
Animals, Bugs, Insects, Reptiles, Fish, etc.
Marine, Maritime, Lacustrine
See also: 
xalli.
moyotl.
zayolin.