Principal English Translation:
a living thing; someone brought back from the dead (see Molina); also refers to animals and eggs (see Molina, Lockhart, and Karttunen)
Alonso de Molina:
Yolqui. animal bruto, o cosa biua, o hueuo empollado, o el resucitado de muerte.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, f. 41r.
Frances Karttunen:
YŌLQUI a living thing, something brought to life/ animal bruto, o cosa viva, o huevo empollado, o el resucitado de muerte a vida (M) [(2)Bf.3r,3v, (6)Xp.82,108]. B forms the plural in regular fashion, YŌLQUEH, while X adds –MEH. See YŌL(I).
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 343.
Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:
a live being, an animal, often a beast of burden. pret. agentive of yōli.
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), 242.
Attestations from sources in English:
onca ye yolque in teteuctini = there the princes are brought back from the dead (late sixteenth century, Tetzcoco?)
Ballads of the Lords of New Spain: The Codex Romances de los Señores de la Nueva España, transcribed and translated by John Bierhorst (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009), 30.