⚠ 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.

iztlacati.

Headword: 
iztlacati.
Principal English Translation: 

to lie, tell untruths
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), 222.

IPAspelling: 
istɬɑkɑti
Alonso de Molina: 

iztlacati. n. (pret. oniztlacat.) mentir.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 49v. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

(I)ZTLACAT(I) to lie / mentir (M). See IZTLACA-.(I)ZTLACATĪHUA nonact. (I)ZTLACAT(I)
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 125.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

ni. Class 2: ōniztlacat. iztlaca-, -ti. 222

Attestations from sources in English: 

In amo qualli ueicapan tlacatl: çan niman atlamauhcaittac, âtlaimacazqui, tlailiuizuiani, uei teca mocacaiaoan iztlacati, tlachamaoa = The bad principal merchant is quite detested. Incorrigible, acting without consideration, he deceives the people, lies, praises his wares. (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), 64.

amo melahuac san oyztlacatia = it was not true (Tlaxcala-Puebla, seventeenth century)
Here in This Year: Seventeenth-Century Nahuatl Annals of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Valley, ed. and transl. Camilla Townsend, with an essay by James Lockhart (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 130–131.

yuh mochi tlacatl momatca. ca aocmo mochihuaz yn iuh oquihtoca tlamatinime. yn iuh ypan mochihuaz tonatiuh. yc oquimiztlacamatque. oquihtoque cequintin españolesme. ca ҫan iztlacati yn tlein. quimomachiztia aҫo ҫan otlahuanque aҫo ҫan imihuincacopa. in tleyn oquihtoque tlamatinime in Astrologos = everyone thought that what the scholars had said would happen to the sun wasn't going to happen; they wrongly considered them liars. Some Spaniards said they are just lying about what they announce, maybe they just got drunk, maybe what the scholars and astrologers said is just drunken talk (central Mexico, 1611)
Annals of His Time: Don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, James Lockhart, Susan Schroeder, and Doris Namala, eds. and transl. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 180–1.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

ytla amiztlacatizque diablo mictlan amechtzacuiltiz = y que si juraban en vano el diablo en el infierno los llevaria (Tlaxcala, 1568)
Catálogo de documentos escritos en náhuatl, siglo XVI, vol. I (Tlaxcala: Gobierno del Estado de Tlaxcala y el Archivo Histórico del Estado de Tlaxcala, 2013), 119.

amoniztlacati = no miento (Tlatelolco, 1558)
Luis Reyes García, Eustaquio Celestino Solís, Armando Valencia Ríos, et al, Documentos nauas de la Ciudad de México del siglo XVI (México: Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social y Archivo General de la Nación, 1996), 80.

nicmati ynic amo niztlacatiz = sé y por ello no mentiré (Ciudad de México, 1558)
Luis Reyes García, Eustaquio Celestino Solís, Armando Valencia Ríos, et al, Documentos nauas de la Ciudad de México del siglo XVI (México: Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social y Archivo General de la Nación, 1996), 99.

auh yn tla tiztlacatiz ca diablo quihuicas yn maniman = y si miente su alma se la llevará el diablo (Ciudad de México, 1569)
Luis Reyes García, Eustaquio Celestino Solís, Armando Valencia Ríos, et al, Documentos nauas de la Ciudad de México del siglo XVI (México: Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social y Archivo General de la Nación, 1996), 130.

themes: 
Behavior, Personality