eltapachtli. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

eltapachtli.

Principal English Translation:

liver(s) (see Molina); entrails (see attestations)

Alonso de Molina:

eltapachtli. higado.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 28v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

ĒL-LI liver / el hígado (M) In compounds this has a broader sense of ‘internal organs’ and is also associated with emotions, especially strong or unpleasant ones.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 77.

Attestations from sources in English:

ca much vncā [fol.31] icuiliuhtoc in tzontecomatl, nacaztli, iollotli, cuitlaxculli eltapachtli, tochichi, macpalli, xocpalli = for there were painted all severed heads, ears, hearts, entrails, livers, lungs, hands and feet (Mexico City, sixteenth century)
James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Repertorium Columbianum v. 1 (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1993), 128.

teltapach tezteco = Our liver: Our blood container (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 257.

in motocaiotia tlaҫotli: iehoatl in toiollo: oc cenca iehoatl in eltapachtli = That which is named precious, this is our heart; especially is it the liver (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), 206.

themes:

Anatomy

Emotions