Principal English Translation:
to go, to go one's way, to travel, to follow a road or a path, to follow along
Alonso de Molina:
otlatoca. n. (pret. onotlatocac.) caminar, o yr cundiendo mucho la mancha.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 78r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
Frances Karttunen:
OHTLATOCA to travel a road, to go along in life, for a stain to spread / caminar, o ir cundiendo mucho la mancha (M) Z has a short form OHTOCA attested twice, once with a long vowel in TOCA. See OH-TLI, TOCA. OHTLATOCTIĀ caus. OHTLATOCA.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 177.
Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:
n. to go along the road, to proceed; to fare, get along in life. Class 1: ōnohtlatocac. ohtli, tla-, toca to follow. 228
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), 228.
Attestations from sources in English:
Achtopa niyāz; achtopa nohtlatocaz. Zātēpan tiyāz; zātēpan tohtlatocaz = First I will go; first I will follow the road. Then you will go; then you will follow the road.
(Atenango, between Mexico City and Acapulco, 1629)
Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions That Today Live Among the Indians Native to This New Spain, 1629, eds. and transl. J. Richard Andrews and Ross Hassig (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984), 85.
otli (road) is the root
Robert Haskett and Stephanie Wood's notes from Nahuatl sessions with James Lockhart and subsequent research.