tzinacantli. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

tzinacantli.

Principal English Translation:

bat (see Karttunen), a biting bat (tzinacan, according to Molina)

Orthographic Variants:

tzinācantli

IPAspelling:

tsinɑːkɑntɬi

Frances Karttunen:

TZINĀCAN-TLI pl:-MEH bat / murciélago que muerde (M) [(2)Zp.87,226, (5)Xp.97, (3)Rp.154]. Z has a long vowel in the first syllable and is missing the final N. X agrees with M in having the final N and gives a short vowel in the first syllable. T has the variant TZONĀCA-TL. R gives this both with and without an absolutive suffix, but M gives it only without.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 312.

Attestations from sources in English:

yn yehuatl yn oçomatzin teuhctli, iuh mitohua nahualli catca moch quinnotzaya yn tocame yn petlaçolcohuatl yn cohuatl yn tzinaca yn collotl, ynic mochtin quinnahuatiaya quipiaya yn ichpoch miyahuaxihuitl = Oçomatzin teuhctli was said to be a sorcerer. He summoned all manner of spiders, centipedes, snakes, bats, and scorpions; he commanded them all to guard his daughter, Miyahuaxihuitl. (central Mexico, early seventeenth century)
Codex Chimalpahin: Society and Politics in Mexico Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Culhuacan, and Other Nahuatl Altepetl in Central Mexico; The Nahuatl and Spanish Annals and Accounts Collected and Recorded by don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), vol. 1, 120–121.

no yuan yn youaltotome yn chichiquatin yn tetecolo, yn tzinacame yuan occequintin yn tetzauhtõtóme, youaltica quiça = and also the birds of the night, the barn owls, the horned owls, the bats, and the other ominous birds, at night they go out (late sixteenth 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), 27.