⚠ 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.

esposa.

(a loanword from Spanish)

Headword: 
esposa.
Principal English Translation: 

a wife; also, when plural, can mean handcuffs
(a loanword from Spanish)

Attestations from sources in English: 

oquimotzacuilili yn imahuan yca esposas (Puebla, circa 1680–1700)
Frances Karttunen and James Lockhart, Nahuatl in the Middle Years: Language Contact Phenomena in Texts of the Colonial Period, Linguistics 85 (Los Angeles, University of California Publications, 1976), Doc. 9.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

niman ompa oquilpi, oquitzacuili in imahuan ica esposas = allí mismo en el instante lo aprisionó, cerrándole las manos con esposas (Puebla, 1797)
Anales del Barrio de San Juan del Río; Crónica indígena de la ciudad de Puebla, xiglo XVII, eds. Lidia E. Gómez García, Celia Salazar Exaire, y María Elena Stefanón López (Puebla: Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, BUAP, 2000), 108.

themes: 
Family, Kinship, Descent