tlatlaciztli. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

tlatlaciztli.

Principal English Translation:

a cough (see attestations)

Orthographic Variants:

tlatlasistli, tlatlaçiztl

IPAspelling:

tɬɑtɬɑsistɬi

Alonso de Molina:

tlatlaciztli. pechuguera, catarro o tos.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 137r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English:

quihualhuicac chicahuac tlatlasistli miec yc momiquili = He brought with him a bad cough of which many died.
Here in This Year: Seventeenth-Century Nahuatl Annals of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Valley, ed. and transl. Camilla Townsend, with an essay by James Lockhart (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 90–91.

tlatlasistli quisaco ytoca chichimeco mihec tlacatl y omomiquili = A cough called “the Chichimeco” broke out.
Here in This Year: Seventeenth-Century Nahuatl Annals of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Valley, ed. and transl. Camilla Townsend, with an essay by James Lockhart (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 94–95.

In another set of annals, the cough is called "chichimecal" (chichimecatl). This was in 1633. (Anales mexicanos, Puebla, Tepeaca, Cholula, 1524–1645)
Frances Krug, "The Nahuatl Annals of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Region," ch. 3, p. 95, Ph.D. Dissertation draft written in the 1980s, with transcriptions and translations approved by James Lockhart. Cited here by SW.

Frances Krug quotes a number of annals from the Tlaxcala-Puebla Valley that refer to epidemics involving a bad cough (tlatlaciztli). A man named Huancho was identified as having introduced the cough, and he was burned at Huexotzinco along with others who had died from the cough.
Frances Krug, "The Nahuatl Annals of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Region," ch. 5, pp. 70–72, Ph.D. Dissertation draft written in the 1980s, with transcriptions and translations approved by James Lockhart. Cited here by SW.

Attestations from sources in Spanish:

ypan mes de mayo huel chicahuac quiçaco tlatlaçiztl huel mochi tlacatl = En el mes de mayo vino a salir una gran tos, muchas personas enfermaron y por eso murió toda la gente. (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), 256–257.

themes:

Death

Health, Sickness, Wellness, Medicine