⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-06

Some of our more complex, multi-field searches (such as the search field on our homepage and Search All Fields) are currently under repair and may not work as expected.

Thank you to all our users who emailed to alert us to the problem! We hope to have it repaired soon.

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

teotia.

Headword: 
teotia.
Principal English Translation: 

to take something to be a god, or to worship something as a god; to be an idolater, to create gods for oneself (see Molina and Karttunen)

IPAspelling: 
teoːtiɑː
Alonso de Molina: 

teotia. nicno. (pret. onicnoteoti.) tener, o adorar alguna cosa por dios.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 101r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

TEŌTIĀ vrefl.vt to create gods for oneself, to be an idolater; to take something to be a god / hago dioses para mí, y usarse por idolatrar (C for first pers. sg. reflexive), tener o adorar alguna cosa por dios (M) [(3)Cf.58r]. Used transitively, this takes a direct object prefix and an oblique reflexive prefix. See TEŌ-TL.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 227–228.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

amo anquitetza[n]matizque amo a[n]quimoteotizque yhuan[n] amo acopa[n] antlachiazque (ca. 1582, Mexico City)
Luis Reyes García, ¿Como te confundes? ¿Acaso no somos conquistados? Anales de Juan Bautista (Mexico: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Biblioteca Lorenzo Boturini Insigne y Nacional Basílica de Guadalupe, 2001), 170.