Principal English Translation:
to fear, to be in fear of; to have respect for, revere, be in awe of (see Molina, Karttune, and Lockhart)
Orthographic Variants:
imacazi, ymacaçi, īmacaci
Alonso de Molina:
imacaci. nite. (pret. oniteimacaz.) temer a alguno.
imacaci. nitla. (pret. onitlaimacaz.) tener respecto o temor. (reuerencial.)
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 37v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
Frances Karttunen:
ĪMACAC(I) vt; pret: ĪMACAZ to hold someone in awe, to fear someone, to be respectful toward someone / temer a alguno (M), tener respecto a temor reverencial (M) ĪMACAXILIĀ applic. ĪMACAC(I) ĪMACAXŌ nonact. ĪMACAC(I) ĪMACAXILTIĀ caus. ĪMACAC(I)
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 105.
Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:
īmacaci, niqu. to fear, respect. Class 2: ōniquīmacaz. 220
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), 220.
Attestations from sources in English:
xiq’[ui]nnahuatican yn macehualtin yhuan y ce[n]ca moneq’[ui] xichautzacan in teçiuhoctli yc a[n]maquiçazque yn iquac antzatzililozque yn Chapoltepec salotica amoxillan ycatiaz yn iquac amechittaz yn Tlantepozyllama yc amechimacaiz yc amo achquaz çan ic amechcahuaz oyuhquihi yn anquicaqui. (Anales de Juan Bautista, f. 8v–9r, 1582) = Listen all of you, the people [macehualtin]: it’s very necessary that you dry out pulque for when you are called out to Chapultepec. You will carry it in a standing vessel on your stomachs. And when the Tlantepoxyllama sees you, she will be afraid of you and not eat you. This you hear is how it will all happen.
Ezekiel G. Stear, Nahua Horizons: Writing, Persuasion, and Futurities in Colonial Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2025), 128.
mochi tlacatl quimacaxi totatzin = everyone is afraid of our father (Jalostotitlan, 1611)
Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), Doc. 27, 170–171.
Attestations from sources in Spanish: