tenamitl. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

tenamitl.

Principal English Translation:

parapet, rampart, wall (see Karttunen and Lockhart); a city wall (see Molina)

Orthographic Variants:

tenantli

IPAspelling:

tenɑːmitɬ

Alonso de Molina:

tenamitl. cerca, o muro de ciudad.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 98r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

TENĀM(I)-TL possessed fom: -TENĀN wall / cerca o muro de ciudad (M) [(2)Cf.58r].
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 224.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:

wall; rampart. 233
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), 233.

Attestations from sources in English:

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

tenamitl (noun) = a town; the wall of a town
Daniel Garrison Brinton, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry: Containing the Nahuatl Text of XXVII Ancient Mexican Poems (1877), 163.

vncā in colivi tetenamitl = where the walls curve
James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Repertorium Columbianum v. 1 (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1993), 212.

tlaltitech ia in tenamitl, vevelocac vmpet, oncoion = the wall went to the ground; it was knocked down in places, perforated, holes were blown in it.
James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Repertorium Columbianum v. 1 (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1993), 192.

in oc ce vncā onoc tenamitl = where there was another wall (Mexico City, sixteenth century)
James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Repertorium Columbianum v. 1 (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1993), 190.

Motenan, motzacuil. Inin tlatolli, intechpa mitoaya in tlatequipanoa: azo calpixcati, azo achcacauhti = Your wall, your enclosure. This was said of those who served in some capacity, such as tribute collectors or captains. Thelma D. Sullivan, "Nahuatl Proverbs, Conundrums, and Metaphors, Collected by Sahagún," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 4 (1963), 160–161.

themes:

Architecture, Construction, Buildings