Principal English Translation:
to pass small twigs through the tongue or the ears, to draw blood as a sacrifice to the deities (see Molina)
a penitential ritual that involved drawing sticks (tlacohtli) through the tongue [causing bloodletting]
Louise M. Burkhart, Before Guadalupe: The Virgin Mary in Early Colonial Nahuatl Literature, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Monograph 13 (Albany: University at Albany, 2001), 54.
Attestations from sources in English:
"the word I translate as ‘sacrificer’ is intetlacoquixticatzin" (early seventeenth century, Central Mexico)
Louise M. Burkhart, Before Guadalupe: The Virgin Mary in Early Colonial Nahuatl Literature, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Monograph 13 (Albany: University at Albany, 2001), 54.
titlacoqujxtiz oppa, ceppa monacazco, ceppa monenepilco: oc cenca ipampa in tetlaxincaiotl = thou art twice [daily] to pass twigs, once through thy ear [lobe], once through thy tongue, especially because of adultery (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, 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), 33.