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.

chilchotl.

Headword: 
chilchotl.
Principal English Translation: 

a long, narrow green chile pepper; and sometimes a reference to a penis
Regarding the sexual connotation for chile, see the story about Tohuenyo in Miguel León-Portilla, Erótica nahuatl (México: El Colegio Nacional y Artes de México y el Mundo, 2018), 10–39, especially p. 38.

IPAspelling: 
tʃiːltʃoːtɬ
Alonso de Molina: 

chilchotl. axi o chilli verde.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 20v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

CHĪLCHŌ-TL green chili pepper / ají o chile verde (M) [(2)Zp.38,152]. It would make sense for the second element of this to be XŌ, referring to greenness, but M and Z agree on CH rather than X.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 51.

Attestations from sources in English: 

ma temolo in chilchonamacac tovenio [Tohuenyo] = let the green chili vending stranger be sought out (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 3 -- The Origin of the Gods, Part IV, 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, 1978), 17.

ҫan tlapilotinemj, chilchotl quinanamaca = He walked about [with virile member] hanging [uncovered], and sold green chilis (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 3 -- The Origin of the Gods, Part IV, 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, 1978), 17.

pitzavac chilchotl = A long narrow green chile (Tlaxcala, 1545)
Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), Doc. 34, 210–211.

Yn nicanchilchotl = A local green chile (Tlaxcala, 1545)
Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), Doc. 34, 210–211.

oncan yc ye mochinantia oncan quitocaque yn tlaolli y huauhtli. yn etl. yn ayotli. yn chilchotl. yn xitomatl. = There they made reed fences for themselves; there they planted corn, amaranth, beans, squash, green chilis, and tomatoes. (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, 84–85.