Principal English Translation:
to lose things, to be confused; or, to cause someone to lose things, to cause someone to become confused or distracted (see Molina and Karttunen)
Alonso de Molina:
tlapololtia. nino. (pret. oninotlapololti.) descuidarse o desatinarse y turbarse.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 132v. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
tlapololtia. nite. (pret. onitetlapololti.) desatinar a otro assi.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 132v. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
Frances Karttunen:
TLAPOLŌLTIĀ vrefl, vt to become distracted or disoriented; to cause someone to become distracted or disoriented / descuidarse o desatinarse y turbarse (M), desatinar a otro así (M). See POLOĀ.TLAPOLŌLTĪLŌ nonact. TLAPOLŌLTIĀ.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 293.
Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:
nino. to be irrational, out of one's senses. Class 3: ōninotlapololtih. reverential of the less common nitlapoloa, which has the same sense.
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), 238.
Attestations from sources in English:
camo tlapollotia: to be in one's right mind
Robert Haskett and Stephanie Wood's notes from Nahuatl sessions with James Lockhart and subsequent research.
omotlapololtitiaque = they lived in confusion (central Mexico, 1611)
Annals of His Time: Don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, James Lockhart, Susan Schroeder, and Doris Namala, eds. and transl. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 180–1.
Attestations from sources in Spanish:
Auh inic onicpolo in tlacpac oncan no ninotlapololti auh nican nictlalia in huel neltiliztli = Y aver testado lo de arriba donde herre y me trascorde pongo aquí la verdad (Ciudad de Mexico, 1578)
Luis Reyes García, Eustaquio Celestino Solís, Armando Valencia Ríos, et al, Documentos nauas de la Ciudad de México del siglo XVI (México: Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social y Archivo General de la Nación, 1996), 150.