cuauhcalli.

Headword: 
cuauhcalli.
Principal English Translation: 

jail, cage, wooden house or wooden structure; or, eagle-house, associated with warfare (see Lockhart, Karttunen, and the attestations from Sahagún); the varying translations of this term are owing to the fact that cuauh- (or quauh-) can be the stem from combining either cuahuitl (wood) or cuauhtli (eagle) with calli (house, building, structure)

Orthographic Variants: 
quauhcalli
Alonso de Molina: 

quauhcalli. jaula grande de palo, adonde estauan los presos por sus delictos. Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 86r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

CUAUHCAL-LI wooden cage, jail / jaula grande de palo, a donde estaban los presos por sus delitos (M) [(1)Cf.97v]. A common variant is HUAUHCAL-LI. See CUAHU(I)-TL, CAL-LI.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 71.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

quahuitl, calli. = jail; any wooden house or structure
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), 231.

Attestations from sources in English: 

Ic nauj parrapho, vncan mjtoa in jnnenonotzaia in tiacahoan in jpampa iaujotl. Tequjoacacalli, quauhcalli, vncan catca in tiacaoan tlacochcalcatl tlacatecatl, jn jnneixcaujl iautequj = Fourth paragraph, in which is discussed the council chamber of the brave warriors devoted to war. Tequiuacacalli or Quauhcalli: there were the brave warriors, the generals, and the commanding generals, whose personal charge was command in war. (central Mexico, sixteenth century) Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 8 -- Kings and Lords, no. 14, Part IX, 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, 1951), 43. quauhcalli = eagle house (according to Sahagún, one of the names for the "houses of the devil") Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 119. auh y huexotzinco yqueteltl vmpa quauhcalli quittato, yn omoteneuhque Mexica pipiltin = But in Huexotzinco the aforesaid Mexica noblemen found a third jail. Codex Chimalpahin: Society and Politics in Mexico Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Culhuacan, and Other Nahuatl Altepetl in Central Mexico; The Nahuatl and Spanish Annals and Accounts Collected and Recorded by don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), vol. 2, 52–53. Also, a wooden cage (incidentally, perhaps, for an eagle). (ca. 1582, México) Luis Reyes García, ¿Como te confundes? ¿Acaso no somos conquistados? Anales de Juan Bautista (Mexico: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Biblioteca Lorenzo Boturini Insigne y Nacional Basílica de Guadalupe, 2001), 186–187.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

quitotique quauhtli teyaca[n] quauhcaltica ycatia nahuintin yn quimamaque = bailaron una águila, la llevaban adelante, iba en pie en una jaula de madera, cuatro la llevaban cargando (ca. 1582, México
Luis Reyes García, ¿Como te confundes? ¿Acaso no somos conquistados? Anales de Juan Bautista (Mexico: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Biblioteca Lorenzo Boturini Insigne y Nacional Basílica de Guadalupe, 2001), 186.

themes: 
Architecture, Construction, Buildings
Crime, Punishment
Technology, Tools
Wood, wooden material