⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-17 - Repairs are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

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.

micca-.

Headword: 
micca-.
Principal English Translation: 

a compounding form that has to do with death and dying (see Karttunen)

Orthographic Variants: 
miccā
IPAspelling: 
mikkɑː
Frances Karttunen: 

MICCĀ- This has two sources. It is the compounding form of the derived noun MICQUI ‘corpse, dead person,’ and it also arises directly from the verb MIQU(I) ‘to die’ followed by the –CĀ - ligature.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 145.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

also pret. combining form of micqui in general. 225

Attestations from sources in English: 

fray Pedro Lazaro ... çan mocnonemiltia yn mahuiztililoni huehue tlacatl motemiccamiquilizpahpalehuillia = fray Pedro Lázaro, ... A venerable ancient person, he lives humbly, he helps people with dying all around Mexico. (central Mexico, 1613)
Annals of His Time: Don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, James Lockhart, Susan Schroeder, and Doris Namala, eds. and transl. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 234–235.

This element, when prefixed to in-law terms, shows that the person through whom the relation exists has died; otherwise, a prefix referring to a dead person. E.g. miccamontli = a son-in-law who has died.
James Lockhart, Nahuatl as Written: Lessons in Older Written Nahuatl, with Copious Examples and Texts (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Studies, 2001), 225.

themes: 
Death