⚠ 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.

xapotla.

Headword: 
xapotla.
Principal English Translation: 

to perforate, to pierce; also, to deflower a virgin
Louise M. Burkhart, Before Guadalupe: The Virgin Mary in Early Colonial Nahuatl Literature, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Monograph 13 (Albany: University at Albany, 2001), 58.

IPAspelling: 
ʃɑpotɬɑ
Alonso de Molina: 

xapotla. nite. (pret. onitexapotlac.) desflorar o corromper virgen.
xapotla. nitla. (pret. onitlaxapotlac.) horadar o romper pared, seto o cosa semejante.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 158v. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English: 

quin tehuatl yancuican oticmahuizpolo, oticxapotlac oticcuilli in iichpochyo = did you just now for the first time disgrace her, deflowering and spoiling her and taking her virginity from her?
Bartolomé de Alva, A Guide to Confession Large and Small in the Mexican Language, 1634, eds. Barry D. Sell and John Frederick Schwaller, with Lu Ann Homza (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 105.

This verb is used to speak of ritual piercing of the septum in the nose (yacaxapotla). (sixteenth century, Quauhtinchan)
Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, eds. Paul Kirchhoff, Lina Odena Güemes, y Luis Reyes García (México: CISINAH, INAH-SEP, 1976), 171.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

quin tehuatl yancuican oticmahuizpolo, oticxapotlac oticcuilli in iichpochyo = quitástele la honra tu, estrupándola
Bartolomé de Alva, A Guide to Confession Large and Small in the Mexican Language, 1634, eds. Barry D. Sell and John Frederick Schwaller, with Lu Ann Homza (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 104–105.