huauhquilitl. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

huauhquilitl.

Principal English Translation:

"wild amaranth, greens which are boiled and eaten as a vegetable" (see Karttunen and Molina)

Orthographic Variants:

uauhquilitl

IPAspelling:

wɑːwkilitɬ

Alonso de Molina:

uauhquilitl. cenizos, o bledos.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 155r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

HUĀUHQUIL(I)-TL wild amaranth, greens which are boiled and eaten as a vegetable / una verdura (Z), (Z), huajquelite (X) [(1)ZP.154,(3)Xp.100]. In the Z attestation the vowel is not marked long. See HUĀUH-TLI, QUIL(I)-TL.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 82.

Attestations from sources in English:

The Florentine Codex, Book 11, folio 133v, provides a glossed image of this plant.
Sahagún, Bernardino de, Antonio Valeriano, Alonso Vegerano, Martín Jacobita, Pedro de San Buenaventura, Diego de Grado, Bonifacio Maximiliano, Mateo Severino, et al. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Florentine Codex), Ms. Mediceo Palatino 218–20, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, MiBACT, 1577. Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter, Alicia Maria Houtrouw, Kevin Terraciano, Jeanette Peterson, Diana Magaloni, and Lisa Sousa, bk. 11, fol. 133v. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/133v . Accessed 18 November 2025. See also f. 134v, where it tells the alternate name for this plant (cualoni xihuitl) and describes it.

themes:

Food, Eating, Cooking

Plants, Trees, Flora