zazanilli.

Headword: 
zazanilli.
Principal English Translation: 

a little tale or story to make people laugh, a joke (see Molina); or, a fable (see Sahagún); a riddle (see Sahagún)

Orthographic Variants: 
çaçanilli
IPAspelling: 
sɑːsɑnilli
Alonso de Molina: 

zazanilli. consejuelas para hazer reyr.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 13v. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English: 

Nican tlami, in hin nenonotzalli, çaçanilli: in ie uecauh ic tlatlanonotzaia, veuetque, in impiel catca. = Here endeth this legend and fable, which was told in times past, and was in the keeping of the old people. (central Mexico, sixteenth-century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 7 -- The Sun, Moon, and Stars, and the Binding of the Venus, No. 14, Part VIII, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1961), 8.

zazanilli = riddles
Maarten E. R. G. N. Jansen, "Las lenguas divinas del México precolonial," Boletín de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe, 38 (1985), 3–14; see page 6.

Cequi zazanilli, in mitoa, zazan tleino, inic ma zazaniluia: in iuhqui ma monaoaltotoca = some conundrums which they tell and try to guess (central Mexico, sixteenth-century)
Thelma D. Sullivan, "Nahuatl Proverbs, Conundrums, and Metaphors, Collected by Sahagún," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 4 (1963), 130–131.

Ic ompoalli omome capitulo, vncan mjtoa: cequj ҫaҫanjlli, in mjtoa ҫaҫan tleino, injc moҫaҫanjlvia, in juhqujma monaoaltotoca = Forty-third Chapter. Here are told some riddles, the so-called "what-is-its" with which riddles are made as if they were mysteries (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1961), 237.

in Ezopó izazanillatol = Aesop's fable
Actas del Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, v. 11 (1897), 100.

Yni çaçanilli = The [sic; This] fable (sixteenth century, central Mexico)
Aesop in Mexico: A 16th Century Aztec Version of Aesop's Fables; text with German and English translation, eds. Gerdt Kutscher, Gordon Brotherston, Günter Vollmer (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1987), 100.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

Ic ompoalli omome capitulo, vncan mjtoa: cequj ҫaҫanjlli, in mjtoa ҫaҫan tleino, injc moҫaҫanjlvia, in juhqujma monaoaltotoca = Capitulo. 42. de algunos ҫaҫanjles de los muchos que vsa esta gente mexicano [sic]: que son como los que cosa y cosa de nuestra lengua (centro de Mexico, s. XVI)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1961), 237.

in Ezopó izazanillatol = una fábula de Esopo
Actas del Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, v. 11 (1897), 100.

Zazanili ipampa ce tlatihuani ahquen oquipiaya yeyi cihuame. = Cuento sobre un hombre que tenía tres esposas. (s. XX, Milpa Alta)
Los cuentos en náhuatl de Doña Luz Jiménez, recop. Fernando Horcasitas y Sarah O. de Ford (México: UNAM, 1979), 58–59.