Search Issues: Update 2026-09-16 - Repairs to some of our search pages are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

alactic.

Headword: 
alactic.
Principal English Translation: 

something slippery (see Karttunen and Lockhart)

IPAspelling: 
ɑlɑktik
Alonso de Molina: 

alactic. cosa deleznable, assi como anguilla, pan de xabon mojado, o flema. &c.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 4r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

ALACTIC something slippery, crumbly / cosa deleznable (M)[(3)Zp.140]. Although Z gives this with a long vowel in the second syllable, attestations of related items in T have a short vowel. Related derived forms with –HUA have the vowel long by a general lengthening rule. See AHALAC-TLI, ALAZTIC.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 9.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

related to alāhua to slide; contains -tic
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), 210.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

alauac o alactic y alguna vez alaztic = resbaladizo (de alaua, resbalar)
Rémi Siméon, Diccionario de la lengua náhuatl o mexicana (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1988), xli.