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.

tepinia.

Headword: 
tepinia.
Principal English Translation: 

to give someone a bump on the head with their knuckles, or to punch someone, or to elbow someone (see Molina)

IPAspelling: 
tepiːniɑː
Alonso de Molina: 

tepinia. nite. (pret. onitetepini.) dar coxcorron con los artejos, o dar de codo.
tepinia. nitla. (pret. onitlatepini.) dar puñete conla mano cerrada, o dar de codo.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 103r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

TEPĪNIĀ vt to punch someone, to hit something with one's fist, to strike something with one's elbow / dar coscorrón con los artejos o dar de codo (M), dar puñete con la mano cerrada o dar de codo (M), lo toca (T), lo picotea (Z).

TEPĪNILIĀ applic. TEPĪNIĀ.

TEPĪNĪLŌ nonact. TEPĪNIĀ.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 230.

Attestations from sources in English: 

quixtepinia = he hits the face with his fist (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), 112.