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azcatl.

Headword: 
azcatl.
Principal English Translation: 

ant (see Molina and Karttunen)

IPAspelling: 
ɑːskɑtɬ
Alonso de Molina: 

azcatl. hormiga.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 10r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

ĀZCA-TL ant / hormiga (M)
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 17.

Attestations from sources in English: 

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

yn azcame yn aca ychã molonia mitoaya ie miqui y chane = When ants scurried through someone’s house it was said that soon the owner of the house would die.
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 175..

Zazan tleino, tlapaltepitzactli, ayoui tequa. Azcatl. = What is long, hard, and red, and bites people without any trouble? An ant.
Thelma D. Sullivan, "Nahuatl Proverbs, Conundrums, and Metaphors, Collected by Sahagún," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 4 (1963), 132–133.

Ҫaҫan tleino, tlapaltepitzactli, aiovi tequa. Azcatl = What is that which is red, slender; [which] easily bites one? The ant (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), 238.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

Ҫaҫan tleino, tlapaltepitzactli, aiovi tequa. Azcatl = Que cosa y cosa, es colorada o bermeja y delgadilla y muerde apressuradamente. Es la homjrga [sic] (centro de Mexico, s. XVI)
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), 238.