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.

ceme.

Headword: 
ceme.
Principal English Translation: 

one of a group

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), 213.

Orthographic Variants: 
çeme
Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

cēmeh. see cē.
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), 213.

Attestations from sources in English: 

This looks something like a plural of ce (one), but the intention is one of a group rather than a plural.

Niquimitta cēmê cihuâ = I see one of the women; Cēmê amèhuāntin ancochî = One of you (pl.) is sleeping
Michel Launey, An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, translated and adapted by Christopher MacKay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 61.

ma oc ie ceme xiquinmanjli, ma oc ie ceme xiqujnmopepenjli, ma oc ie ceme mjtzonmotlapialilican, ma oc ie ceme inca xommotlatemoli = Take one of these; choose one of these. Let one of these guard for thee. Seek one of these to replace another (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), 27.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

auh y tla ocçepa momatiz mocaquiz yazque Mexico mecatlayahualultilosque noço çeme pilulosque nican Tlaxcallan = Y si otra vez se sabe, se oye, que van a México, se les hará desfilar azotándolos o alguno será colgado aquí en Tlaxcala (Tlaxcala, 1662–1692)
Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, Historia cronológica de la Noble Ciudad de Tlaxcala, transcripción paleográfica, traducción, presentación y notas por Luis Reyes García y Andrea Martínez Baracs (Tlaxcala y México: Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, Secretaría de Extensión Universitaria y Difusión Cultural, y Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, 1995), 492–493.

themes: 
Numbers, Math