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xahua.

Headword: 
xahua.
Principal English Translation: 

to paint oneself; to apply makeup (in the way indigenous women did in ancient times); or, for fruit to ripen (take on a color) (see Molina)

Orthographic Variants: 
xaua
IPAspelling: 
ʃɑːwɑ
Alonso de Molina: 

xaua mo. (pret. omoxauh.) pintar la fruta.
xaua. nino. (pret. oninoxauh.) afeitarse la yndia a su modo antiguo o pintar la fruta.
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.

Attestations from sources in English: 

xahua (when a reflexive verb) = to paint one's self (called "afeitarse" in Molina and other sources, to array one's self in the ancient manner
Daniel Garrison Brinton, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry: Containing the Nahuatl Text of XXVII Ancient Mexican Poems (1877), 167.

ce cihuatl moxauhticac = a woman painted in the traditional manner (central Mexico, early seventeenth century)
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. 1, 98–99.

themes: 
Women, Men, Gender