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.

xochicualli.

Headword: 
xochicualli.
Principal English Translation: 

fruit, in general; or, bananas (see Karttunen)

Orthographic Variants: 
xōchihcualli, xochicuali
IPAspelling: 
ʃoːtʃihkwɑlli
Frances Karttunen: 

XŌCHIHCUAL-LI fruit in general; banana / fruta generalmente (M), platano (Z) In C and Z this is abundantly attested and consistently with a glottal stop between the two component elements. In T it is attested only once and without the glottal stop, but the loss of internal glottal stops is characteristic of T. The specific sense ‘banana’ is common to Z and Nahuatl of the Huasteca, areas where bananas are intensively cultivated. See XŌCHI-TL, CUAL-LI.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 328.

Attestations from sources in English: 

xōchicualli = fruit (lit., good [or edible; cf. cua] part of the flower)Michel Launey, An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, translated and adapted by Christopher MacKay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 169.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

onictocac metl, xochicualcuahuitl = yo sembré magueyes y árboles de frutas (en un testamento modelo, imaginado)
Martín de León, Camino al cielo en lengua mexicana (Mexico: Diego López, 1611), f. 140r. Frase traducido por Stephanie Wood.

In tatli oyaya tlacencuiz ica xochicuali. = El padre iba a recoger fruta. (s. XX, Milpa Alta)
Los cuentos en náhuatl de Doña Luz Jiménez, recop. Fernando Horcasitas y Sarah O. de Ford (México: UNAM, 1979), 106–107.

themes: 
Food, Eating, Cooking
Plants, Trees, Flora