⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-17 - Repairs are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

Some of our more complex, multi-field searches (such as the search field on our homepage and Search All Fields) are currently under repair and may not work as expected.

Thank you to all our users who emailed to alert us to the problem! We hope to have it repaired soon.

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

nepa.

Headword: 
nepa.
Principal English Translation: 

over there; more in that direction; some time ago

IPAspelling: 
neːpɑ
Alonso de Molina: 

nepa. alli, o alla, o de alli, o de alla. aduerbio.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 68v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

NĒPA there, at some distance in space or time / allí o allá o de allí o de allá (M), antiguamente (C for IN YE NĒPA), en aquel tiempo, en aquellos días (T for CA YE NĒPA) According to C this is close in sense to NECHCA but does not require the point in question to be visible, as NECHCA does (f.89v). C also says that this is close in sense to NIPA 'over there, on the other side' (which has a short vowel in the initial syllable) but NIPA does not specifically point at a location (f.90r).
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 168–169.

Horacio Carochi / English: 

nēpa = over there (as in the Spanish, allá -- we don't have to see object or place referred to; rather vague)
Horacio Carochi, S.J., Grammar of the Mexican language with an explanation of its adverbs (1645), translated and edited with commentary by James Lockhart, UCLA Latin American Studies Volume 89 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2001), 72–73, 332–33, 507.

Andrés de Olmos: 

Nepa, ompa, nechca, nechcapa, alli, de alli, por alli, a alli, o aculla, de aculla, por aculla, a aculla.
Andrés de Olmos, Arte para aprender la lengua Mexicana, ed. Rémi Siméon, facsimile edition ed. Miguel León-Portilla (Guadalajara: Edmundo Aviña Levy, 1972), 188.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

particle. there, at a distance, sometimes on the far side. 227
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), 227.

Attestations from sources in English: 

nepa (adverb) = here, there; ye nepa = a little further, beyond; oc nepa = further on
Daniel Garrison Brinton, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry: Containing the Nahuatl Text of XXVII Ancient Mexican Poems (1877), 159.

Nopayoh. "There (close to the person being spoken to)." Nepa. "There (not close to either the speaker or the person being spoken to)."(Eastern Huastecan Nahuatl, modern)
Twitter idiezac post, June 2010.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

ynic patlahuac y aço onpohuali at noço nepa amo huel niguilnamigui = tendrá cuarenta brazas de ancho o más que no me acuerdo bien (Tlaxcala, 1609)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVII, vol. 3, Teresa Rojas Rabiela, et al, eds. (México: CIESAS, 2002), 60–61.

auh yn nepa centetl = otro aposento de acullá (Tulancingo, 1572)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 2, Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVI, eds., Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, Constantino Medina Lima (Mexico: Consejo Nacional de Ciencias Tecnología, 1999), 172–173.

Sant Felipe don Nicolas Mendez yquac yacuican calac cabildo amo celiloya ya nepa huecauh y quinemilitinemi ynic calaquiz cabildo ypapa ychtacaconetl portoquez = en San Felipe, don Nicolás Méndez que entonces, por primera vez, entró al cabildo. No era aceptado desde mucho tiempo atrás andaba intentando entrar al cabildo, a causa de que era hijo bastardo, su padre era portugués. (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), 308–309.

themes: 
Time, Calendar, Frequency