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.

coatetl.

Headword: 
coatetl.
Principal English Translation: 

a snake's egg (see Molina); or, a cyst (Sahagún)

Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 10 -- The People, No. 14, Part 11, 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), 149.

IPAspelling: 
koːɑːtetɬ
Alonso de Molina: 

coatetl. hueuo de culebra.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 24v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English: 

Coatetl: in tequechtlan motlalia, moxotla, moqujxtia in textotonti: njman piçietl, iietl tenexio, iztaio totonquj vnmaquja. Auh in ie ixpalanj, motetequj in metl mooatza, mocoxonja, vnmotemilia, anoço ic mopotonia = Cyst: When it occurs on the throat, it is incised; the small core is removed. Then small tobacco [and powdered] tobacco, [mixed] with lime [and] salt, are placed hot in [the incision]. And if it becomes festered, a maguey leaf is cut up; dried, powdered, it is packed [in the incision] or used as a poultice. (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 10 -- The People, No. 14, Part 11, 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), 149.

themes: 
Health, Sickness, Wellness, Medicine
Snakes, Serpents