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zozo.

Headword: 
zozo.
Principal English Translation: 

to string things together by piercing and threading them (see Karttunen); see also the use of this verb in the sense of to impale (see attestations)

Orthographic Variants: 
zohzō
IPAspelling: 
sohsoː
Alonso de Molina: 

zozo. nitla. (pret. onitlazozoc.) ensartar cuentas, axi, flores, o cosas semejantes.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 24v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

ZOHZŌ vt; pret: ZOHZŌC to string things together by piercing and threading them. / ensartar cuentas, ají, flores, o cosas semejantes (M). In T there has been characteristic loss of the internal glottal stop. See ZŌ.

ZOHZŌLŌ nonact. ZOHZŌ.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 348.

Attestations from sources in English: 

See an image that represents zozo in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).

In the Florentine Codex, there is a discussion of the way quimichin (mice) and cuetzpalin (lizards) were impaled (probably having been dropped from the air) onto the sharp tips of the metl (maguey) plant by a bird. An image illustrates this grizzly practice. (SW)
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 49v, Sahagún, Bernardino de. Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain. Transcribed and translated with notes by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble. 2nd rev. ed. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research / University of Utah Press, 1950–82. Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/49v Accessed 18 October 2025.

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