⚠ 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.

tzitzica.

Headword: 
tzitzica.
Principal English Translation: 

to swarm; to fit something tightly through a small hole (see Molina); or, to stuff something tight, to compress something in a container (see Karttunen)

IPAspelling: 
tsitsiːkɑ
Alonso de Molina: 

tzitzica. nitla. (pret. onitlatzitzicac.) atorar o meter algo muy apretado en algun agujero.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 152v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

TZITZĪCA vt to stuff something tight, to compress something in a container / atorar o meter algo muy apretado en algun agujero (M) [(1)Cf.84v].
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 315.