mexcalli.

MEXCAL-LI mezcal, distilled alcoholic drink made by cooking the heart of the maguey plant / cierta planta comestible de la clase de los magueyes o áloes de la cual se saca un licor fortísimo (R), mezcal (T) T has MEZ for MEX and a long vowel in the second syllable in this and all derivations, probably by receiving it from Spanish as a back loan and interpreting the Spanish stressed syllable as containing a long vowel. A possible derivation is from ME-TL ‘maguey’ and (I)XCA ‘to bake something’ Distilling was a late introduction, and the earliest attestation of this item among the sources for this dictionary is R.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 144–145.