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.

tizatl ihuitl.

Headword: 
tizatl ihuitl.
Principal English Translation: 

chalk, feathers; a metaphor for human sacrifice (see attestations)

Orthographic Variants: 
tiçatzintli yuitzintli, tizatl ihhuitl
Attestations from sources in English: 

tiçatzintli yuitzintli ticontitlanica = Let us ask for the chalk and feathers! [i.e. to die and be sacrificed]
Camilla Townsend, Annals of Native America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 38, 231.

Chalk and feathers are referenced as the "adornments of sacrificial victims," citing Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc.
Indigenous Graphic Communication Systems: A Theoretical Approach, eds. Katarzyna Mikulska and Jerome A. Offner (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2019), ch. 3.