xalli.

Headword: 
xalli.
Principal English Translation: 

sand

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), 241.

IPAspelling: 
ʃɑːlli
Alonso de Molina: 

xalli. arena, o cierta piedra arenisca.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 158v. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

XĀL-LI sand /arena, o cierta piedra arenisca (M).
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 321.

Attestations from sources in English: 

See an image that represents xalli in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).

Doris Heyden's study of the ritual uses of sand, as illuminated in the Florentine Codex, according to James Ellison, reveals that "sand formed a boundary between land and water, and represented the importance of water, the goal of agricultural fertility, and the transition from living to dead."
See James Ellison's review of Representing Aztec Ritual (2002) edited by Eloise Quiñones Keber, in Latin American Antiquity 18:2 (June 2007), 225–227; for quote see 226.

“In Nahuatl glyphics, clusters of dots denote sand, xalli, and the glyph probably signifies xalalli, sandy soil (Sahagún, 1963, p. 251, 252).” (p. 56)
Barbara J. Williams, "Pictorial Representation of Soils in the Valley of Mexico: Evidence from the Codex Vergara," Geoscience and Man 21 (1980), 51–62.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

xali yn icpac quisaya tepetl ynic potonia yuhqui polpra = cayó arena que salía de la cima de la montaña y olía como pólvora (Tlaxcala, 1662–1692)
Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, Historia cronológica de la Noble Ciudad de Tlaxcala, transcripción paleográfica, traducción, presentación y notas por Luis Reyes García y Andrea Martínez Baracs (Tlaxcala and México: Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, Secretaría de Extensión Universitaria y Difusión Cultural, y Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, 1995), 342–343.

themes: 
Landscape Features