Principal English Translation:
a key; or, an opener
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), 238.
Alonso de Molina:
tlatlapoloni. llaue para abrir y cerrar.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 139r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:
instrumental noun from tlapoa.
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), 238.
Attestations from sources in English:
Diego Apanecatl was a tlatlapo (gatekeeper or doorkeeper, probably of the local Franciscan friary) in late sixteenth-century Tula.
Fray Alonso de Molina, Nahua Confraternities in Early Colonial Mexico: The 1552 Nahuatl Ordinances of fray Alonso de Molina, OFM, ed. and trans., Barry D. Sell (Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2002), 56.