⚠ 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.

mecaxicolli.

Headword: 
mecaxicolli.
Principal English Translation: 

a jacket made from ropes, a knotted cord jacket (see Sahagún)

IPAspelling: 
mekɑʃikoːlli
Attestations from sources in English: 

Naztauh, nomecaxicol. Quitoznequi: inic onechtequimacac in altepetl: ic in itlacauh oninochiuh intla niquitlacoz, intla itla ic nicouitiliz: nictzactiaz. = My heron-feather headdress, my jacket of ropes. This means: When the city gives me a responsibility I become a slave. If I hurt the city in some way, if I endanger it, I shall be put in jail.
Thelma D. Sullivan, "Nahuatl Proverbs, Conundrums, and Metaphors, Collected by Sahagún," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 4 (1963), 140–141.auh yoan yn jquac y, tlaacopiloaia: auh ynaca oc concholotiaia, yn iqueztepol malli: yoan mecaxicolli, aztapalactontli itech pilcac = Moreover, at this same time he put up[on the point of the pole], so that it hung—having removed the [remaining] flesh—the thigh bone of the captive, and suspended with it the sleeveless knotted cord jacket and a small spray of heron feathers. (16th century, Mexico City)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 2—The Ceremonies, No. 14, Part III, 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, 1951), 57.