apantli. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

apantli.

Principal English Translation:

a river; a canal or water ditch (see Molina); the lower counterpart to the cuemitl (ridge) in traditional agriculture; possibly also used to demarcate a boundary or the edge of a parcel of land or territory

IPAspelling:

ɑːpɑntɬi

Alonso de Molina:

apantli. acequia de agua.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 6v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

ĀPAN-TLI pl: -MEH ditch, canal, river / acequia de agua (M), barranca, río (T), zanja (T)[(2)Tp.170,171,(1)Rp.71]. R´s gloss of this as ´bridge´ probably represents a different derivation from Ā-TL and PANŌ. In one attestation T has a long vowel in the second syllable. See Ā-TL, -PAN.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 11.

Attestations from sources in English:

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

apantli (sometimes spelled anpantli) = a river, or any body of water, but usually long and narrow, rather than wide
Rebecca Horn's notecards from Nahuatl study sessions with James Lockhart in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

auh oc cenca iehoatl, xicmocujtlavican in cuemjtl, in apantli, ipan xitlatocan: auh xontlatepeoacan in mjlpan = And especially take care of the ridge, of the ditch. Plant and sow in the field (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1961), 90.

cujx vel cuemjtl, apantli = perhaps thou wilt make well the ridges of land, the canals (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1961), 193.

Attestations from sources in Spanish:

onacitica yncan onca ce apantontli = llega hasta a donde está una zanjilla (Tepotzotlan, 1631)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVII, vol. 3, Teresa Rojas Rabiela, et al, eds. (México: CIESAS, 2002), 176–177.

In tlatoque, ca quimocuitlahuitihui, ca ipan tlatotihui in cuemitl, in apantli. = Los reyes van cuidando, van hablando po los camellones, los surcos (la agricultura, el cultivo). (CF/VI, p. 90) (s. XVI, México)
Thelma Sullivan, Compendio de la gramática náhuatl, 4a. edición (México: UNAM, 1998), 141.

Nican pehua apantli mexicatzinco = aqui comienza en El Lindero yamado Mexicazinco (document translated in the second half of the eighteenth century, Guerrero)
Danièle Dehouve, "Dos relatos sobre migraciones nahuas en el Estado de Guerrero," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 12 (1976), 141, 145.

themes:

Agriculture, Gardens, Stockraising