tlacateuctli. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

tlacateuctli.

Principal English Translation:

patron, protector, boss (see Karttunen); also, a title associated with some high rulers (see Sahagún)

Orthographic Variants:

tlācatēuctli, tlacatecutli, tlacatecuhtli

IPAspelling:

tɬɑːkɑteːwktɬi

Frances Karttunen:

TLĀCATĒUC-TLI patron, protector, boss / señor, dueño, soberano (S), su patrón, su amo (Z for possessed form) [(1)Bf.5v(2)Zp.95,171]. This was originally a title of high nobility. See TLĀCA-TL, TĒUC-TLI.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 253.

Attestations from sources in English:

tlacateuctli (noun) = a sovereign, a ruler
Daniel Garrison Brinton, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry: Containing the Nahuatl Text of XXVII Ancient Mexican Poems (1877), 164.

in motecuçomatzin ipiltoca, auh Tlacatecutli in itlatocatoca = Moteucçoma was his personal name and Tlacateuctli was his title as ruler (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Repertorium Columbianum v. 1 (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1993), 58.

in tlacatecutli, in jlvicamjna, in motecuҫoma = the Tlacatecutli Motecuҫoma Iluicamina (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, 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, 1961), 71.

vme in tecutlato, ce quappan, ce pilpan: ce quappan, tlacatecutli, tlacochtecutli, auh ce pilli: auh in quauhtlato, no ce quappan tlacateccatl, tlacochcalcatl, no ce pilli = there are two [assisting] dignitaries, one from the military, one from the nobility. The one from the military is the Tlacatecutli; the one from the nobility is the Tlacochtecutli. And of the commanders also, one is from the military, the Tlacateccatl; one also is from the nobility, the Tlacochcalcatl (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, 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, 1961), 110.

antonio tlacatecuhctl [sic] = Antonio Tlacatecuhctli (Tepetlaoztoc, sixteenth century)
Barbara J. Williams and H. R. Harvey, The Códice de Santa María Asunción: Facsimile and Commentary: Households and Lands in Sixteenth-Century Tepetlaoztoc (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1997), 121–122.