Search Issues: Update 2026-09-16 - Repairs to some of our search pages are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

tlacoquixtiliztli.

Headword: 
tlacoquixtiliztli.
Principal English Translation: 

the passing of twigs through the tongue and ears; perforation; self-sacrifice (a pre-Columbian ceremony)
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 72, 73, 198.

IPAspelling: 
tɬɑkoːkiːʃtiːlistɬi
Attestations from sources in English: 

We see this mentioned in the Florentine Codex as a punishment for vice. Specifically, twigs were to be passed through the ear lobe and the tongue. (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), 33.

themes: 
Anatomy
Crime, Punishment
Gifts, Offerings, Sacrificial Rites
Religion (Indigenous)
Wood, wooden material