chachacuaca. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

chachacuaca.

Principal English Translation:

to sprinkle, for mud to splatter (see Karttunen), for mud to splash or spatter, as one walks through a muddy place or quagmire (see Molina)

Orthographic Variants:

chachaquaca

IPAspelling:

tʃɑtʃɑkwɑkɑ

Alonso de Molina:

chachaquaca. (pret. ochachaquacac.) salpicar el lodo, andando por lodazales.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 19r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

CHACHACUACA to sprinkle, for mud to splatter / salpicar el lodo, andando por lodazales (M), salpica (Z) [(2)Zp.113,150]. This is synonymous with CHACHAPACA, and they probably share a common source with substitution of one labial consonant for another. See CHACUĀN(I).
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 44.

Attestations from sources in English:

atentli itech onmotlatlatzoa, onmochachaquanja, mapopoçoquillotia. = the water striketh the shore, spraying water and foaming. (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 1 -- The Gods; No. 14, Part 2, 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, 1950), 6.

themes:

Water