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matlatl.

Headword: 
matlatl.
IPAspelling: 
mɑːtɬɑtɬ
Frances Karttunen: 

MĀTL(A)-TL net, sling / red generalmente (M) M has this in the Spanish-to-Nahuatl section of the dictionary, but it is missing from the Nahuatl-to-Spanish side.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 139.

Attestations from sources in English: 

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

oncan motlatlamalique in mexitin yca yn mitl matlatl = there the Mexica fished with dart and net
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. 2, 20–21.

matlatl = hand slings (late sixteenth century, Tetzcoco?)
Ballads of the Lords of New Spain: The Codex Romances de los Señores de la Nueva España, transcribed and translated by John Bierhorst (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009), 32.