⚠ 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.

tlacoyohuac.

Headword: 
tlacoyohuac.
Principal English Translation: 

midnight (see Karttunen and Molina)

Orthographic Variants: 
tlacoyouac, tlahcoyohuac, tlacoyohuan, tlacoiooan, tlacoyuac
IPAspelling: 
tɬɑhkoyowɑk
Alonso de Molina: 

tlacoyuac. la media noche.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 118v. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

TLAHCOYOHUAC midnight / media noche (T) [(1)Tp.231]. See TLAHCO, YOHUAC.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 260.

Attestations from sources in English: 

injc njnentlamati in tlacoiooan, in iooalli xeliuj, in canjn nemj noiollo, in temo, in tleco = for this I am unhappy at midnight, at the parting of the night. Wherever my heart goeth, it sinketh, it riseth (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), 89.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

huel tlacoyouac = era como a media noche (Tlaxcala, 1562)
Catálogo de documentos escritos en Náhuatl, siglo XVI, vol. I (México, Gobierno del Estado de Tlaxcala, 2013), 11.

auh y Naçareno ypilhuan yn tlayahualoque tlaco yohuac = Los hijos del Nazareno hicieron una procesión a la media noche (Tlaxcala, 1662–1692)
Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, Historia cronológica de la Noble Ciudad de Tlaxcala, transcripción paleográfica, traducción, presentación y notas por Luis Reyes García y Andrea Martínez Baracs (Tlaxcala and México: Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, Secretaría de Extensión Universitaria y Difusión Cultural, y Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, 1995), 298–299.

themes: 
Time, Calendar, Frequency