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.

tzopelic.

Headword: 
tzopelic.
Principal English Translation: 

something sweet (see Molina)

IPAspelling: 
tsopeːlik
Alonso de Molina: 

tzopelic. cosa dulce.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 153v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

TZOPĒLIC something sweet / cosa dulce (M) See TZOPĒLIY(A).
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 318.

Horacio Carochi / English: 

tzopēlic -- in Castillān tlaīlli, ca yamanqui, tzopēlic = wine is soft and sweet
Horacio Carochi, S.J., Grammar of the Mexican Language with an Explanation of its Adverbs (1645), translated and edited with commentary by James Lockhart, UCLA Latin American Studies Volume 89 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2001), 353.

Attestations from sources in English: 

ipampa in itlaneltoquilitzin Dios, ihuan in itlayecoltilocatzin zenquizcatzopelic zenquizcahuiac = Wherefore God's faith and service to Him is perfectly sweet and fragrant
Bartolomé de Alva, A Guide to Confession Large and Small in the Mexican Language, 1634, eds. Barry D. Sell and John Frederick Schwaller, with Lu Ann Homza (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 61.

Tzopelic, auiyac. Itechpa mitoaya in altepetl: in oncan netlamachtilo, pacoa: anozo itechpa mitoaya in tlatoani, tepapaquiltiani = Sweet and fragrant. This was said about a city where there was prosperity and joy, or about a king who brought joy to the people
Thelma D. Sullivan, "Nahuatl Proverbs, Conundrums, and Metaphors, Collected by Sahagún," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 4 (1963), 148–149.

tzopelīc = "sweet-tasing, sugary"
cecēc = "cold, icy (from cetl, 'ice')"
Michel Launey, An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, translated and adapted by Christopher MacKay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 112.

in tzopelic, in aviac = that which is sweet, fragrant (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), 9.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

ipampa in itlaneltoquilitzin Dios, ihuan in itlayecoltilocatzin zenquizcatzopelic zenquizcahuiac = pues que siendo tan dulce, tan suaue, y sabrosa la ley de Dios
Bartolomé de Alva, A Guide to Confession Large and Small in the Mexican Language, 1634, eds. Barry D. Sell and John Frederick Schwaller, with Lu Ann Homza (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 60–61.

themes: 
Sensory Perception (sound, smell, etc.)