Principal English Translation:
a sling for hurling stones
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), 233.
Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:
combining form temātla-. tetl, mātlatl net. 233
Attestations from sources in English:
cequi ntí n ycatematl, tetl quitlaza ya = Cequi:ntin i:ca tematl tetl quitla:zaya = Some threw down rock with slings
Anónimo mexicano, ed. Richley H. Crapo and Bonnie Glass-Coffin (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2005), 39.
ynic tlachiuhtli mecatl ŷ tetl ynic tlamotlalo tlatematelavilo = This is it made: It is of rope made into a net. A stone is placed in it. With it stones are hurled; there is hunting with a sling (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 276.