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.

pinacatl.

Headword: 
pinacatl.
Principal English Translation: 

a large non-flying, reddish beetle (see Karttunen and Molina); a stink beetle or acrobat beetle; see the image of the beetle in the DFC
Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 98v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/98v/images/f7339077-6... Accessed 4 November 2025.

IPAspelling: 
piːnɑkɑtɬ
Alonso de Molina: 

pinacatl. escarauajo grande y bermejo que no buela.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 82r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

PĪNACA-TL large nonflying, reddish beetle / escarabajo grande y bermejo que no vuela (M) [(1)]Cf.122v].
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 196.

themes: 
Animals, Bugs, Insects, Reptiles, Fish, etc.