Principal English Translation:
something narrow
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), 213.
Frances Karttunen:
CANĀHUAC something flan and thin / cosa delgada …. lienzo, o manta delgada de algodón (M) See CANĀHU(A), CANACTIC.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 24.
Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:
canāhuac. pret. agentive from canāhua, to be or become narrow.
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), 213.
Attestations from sources in English:
canahuac tilmahtli = thin cape
canahuactene [tilmahtli] = thin, bordered cape
Justyna Olko, Turquoise Diadems and Staffs of Office: Elite Costume and Insignia of Power in Aztec and Early Colonial Mexico (Warsaw: Polish Society for Latin American Studies and Centre for Studies on the Classical Tradition, University of Warsaw, 2005), 185.