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.

chitoni.

Headword: 
chitoni.
Principal English Translation: 

for wood to splinter or chip off; for beads to drop when one is making a strand; or, for the fire to flare and sparkle (see Molina and Karttunen)

IPAspelling: 
tʃitoːni
Alonso de Molina: 

chitoni. (pret. ochiton.) saltar el astilla, o la cuenta quando la quieren ensartar, o centellear la lumbre o el fuego.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 21v. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

CHITŌN(I) for sparks, chips to fly; for a story to be told in an animated manner; for a fire to flare and sparkle / saltar el astilla, o la cuenta cuando la quieren ensartar, o centellear la lumbre o el fuego (M), bota, tira, salta (T)
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 53.

Attestations from sources in English: 

chitoni (verb) = to sparkle, to glitter Daniel Garrison Brinton, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry: Containing the Nahuatl Text of XXVII Ancient Mexican Poems (1887), 152.

themes: 
Fire, Tobacco, Incense
Wood, wooden material