Search Issues: Update 2026-09-16 - Repairs to some of our search pages are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

cocotli.

Headword: 
cocotli.
Principal English Translation: 

tube, esophagus, windpipe, throat; urethra (see also our entry for cocotli meaning turtledove or perhaps "little one")

Orthographic Variants: 
cocohtli
IPAspelling: 
koːkohtɬi
Alonso de Molina: 

cocotli. garguero.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 23v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

CŌCOH-TLI throat, windpipe / garguero (M) cuello, (T) [(7)Tp.121,147]. M provides the absolutive suffix, the –TLI form of which indicates a stem-final glottal stop, glottal stop, T characteristically lacks the internal glottal stop and moreover has reflexes of long vowels in both syllables. CŌCOH-TLI dove, mourning dove / tortoa (M) tórtola mexicana (R) [(1)Rp.77,(1)Tp.121,(3)Xp.33]. R attests the stemfinal glottal stop and absolutive suffix, while T’s and X`s CŌCOTETZIN lacks the glottal stop but attests the long vowel in the first syllable. This is apparently homophonous with CŌCOH-TLI ‘throat.’ For a similar case, see COPĀCTECOLŌ-TL.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 38.

Attestations from sources in English: 

cocôtli = urethra; tococôio = our urethra; meltecujnja = one's urethra is intermittently obstructed; textemj = it fills with fine-textured material (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 10 -- The People, No. 14, Part 11, 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), 132.

cocotl = esophagus;
tlatolhoaztli = gullet;
tlatololoni = the swallower;
vncãan mopetzcoa, in tlaqualali = there the food is slipped down; tlatoloa = it swallows;
tlatopeoa = it forces [down];
tlapetztoloa = it swallows things smoothly (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 10 -- The People, No. 14, Part 11, 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), 108.

themes: