Principal English Translation:
sauce, something ground 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), 225.
Frances Karttunen:
MŌL-LI sauce, broth, gravy, mole / salsa, guiso, potaje (S), mole (T) See MŌLA. Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 157.
Attestations from sources in English:
See an image that represents molli in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).
Entered Spanish as mole. tlaçotli mvlli = the precious sauces (central Mexico, sixteenth century) Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 226. Much in qujmomolchioa in tapaiaxin njcaci. Iquac mjtoa: in aca itla tequjtilo, in amo ovi: cenca covicaitta = They make mole of all the horned toads I catch.... It is said at this time: If someone is assigned some easy task, he regards it as difficult (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), 233.
Attestations from sources in Spanish:
Much in qujmomolchioa in tapaiaxin njcaci. Iquac mjtoa: in aca itla tequjtilo, in amo ovi: cenca covicaitta = Dizese este adagio, de aquellos que qualqujera cosa libiana se le haze graue de hazer (centro de Mexico, s. XVI) 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), 233.