⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-06

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.

camatl.

Headword: 
camatl.
Principal English Translation: 

the mouth

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), 212.

IPAspelling: 
kɑmɑtɬ
Alonso de Molina: 

camatl. boca.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 12r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

CAM(A)-TL possessed form: -CAN mouth / boca (M) Cf.82v gives –CAMAC as an alternative possessed form. See CAMAC-TLI.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 24.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

combining form cama-.

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), 212.

Attestations from sources in English: 

yn tleyn nocamatica niquitoz = what I shall say with my mouth (San Simón Pochtlan, 1695)
Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), Doc. 5, 68–69.

tocamac tlaqua / chichi = Our mouth: it eats, it spits (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 256.

nocamac = in my mouth (colonial Mexico)
Michel Launey, An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, translated and adapted by Christopher MacKay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 9.

camatl; tocama, coionqui, quiquiztic, coiaoac, tlaqualoia, totlaquaia, tlaceliloia, vncã motzaqua, vncan motlalia in tlaqualli, inic moqua, inic mocuechoa = mouth, our mouth, hole, like a passage way, wide, place for eating, our place for eating, place for receiving, there it is closed, there is placed the food in order to eat [it], in order to chew [it] (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 10 -- The People, No. 14, Part 11, 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), 107.

ca oicamac ticalac in tequanj [...] ca ie tequanj icamac = thou hast entered the mouth of a wild beast [...] For already thou art in the mouth of the wild beast (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), 72.

ie iacattiuh in cioatl, in qujqua nauhcamatl: ҫatepan qujqualtia in oqujchtli no nauhcamatl = The woman took the lead in eating four mouthfuls; thereafter she also fed the man four mouthfuls (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), 132.

camatl = mouth, utterance
cencamatl = individual word
Rebecca Horn's notecards from Nahuatl study sessions with James Lockhart, ca. late 1970s and early 1980s.