⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-06

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.

Spanish Loanwords | L

Letter L: Displaying 1 - 20 of 44

the (an article)
(a loanword from Spanish)

lagoon, lake (a loanword from Spanish) Leslie S. Offutt, "Levels of Acculturation in Northeastern New Spain; San Esteban Testaments of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Estudios de cultura náhuatl 22 (1992), 409–443, see page 432–433.

Orthographic Variants: 
lambra, lapara

lamp, oil lamp
(a loanword from Spanish)

wool

See an example of the use of this loanword on plate 61 of the Codex Sierra, https://bidilaf.buap.mx/objeto.xql?id=48281&busqueda=Texupan&action=search

a cofradía devoted to the souls of the dead in purgatory
(a loanword from Spanish)

Caterina Pizzigoni, ed., Testaments of Toluca (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2007), 116, n2,

Latin
(a loanword from Spanish)

loyal
(a loanword from Spanish)

Orthographic Variants: 
lecsio

a reading; a religious reading during mass; a lesson
(a loanword from Spanish)

milk
(a loanword from Spanish)

a Spanish surname carried, for example by don Fray Bartolomé de Ledesma, bishop of Oaxaca, a Dominican friar

(central Mexico, early seventeenth century)
see 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), 28–29.

to read
(a loanword from Spanish)

a league
(a loanword from Spanish)

Orthographic Variants: 
de leon, lleonis

a lion; a feature of the royal coat of arms (early seventeenth century, central New Spain) 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), 208–209. also Leo, a sign of the zodiac; actually, originally a loanword from Latin, although possibly similar in siixteenth-century Spanish; see Lori Boornazian Diel, The Codex Mexicanus: A Guide to Life in Late-Sixteenth-Century New Spain (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018), 172.

Also attested as a sign of the zodiac in Chimalpahin (central Mexico, early seventeenth century)
Codex Chimalpahin: Society and Politics in Mexico Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Culhuacan, and Other Nahuatl Altepetl in Central Mexico; The Nahuatl and Spanish Annals and Accounts Collected and Recorded by don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), vol. 2, 128–129.

litany
(a loanword from Spanish)

Orthographic Variants: 
letras

a letter (of the alphabet); also, the hand or handwriting of a notary (see attestations)

lawyer with a degree; writes opinions, legal aspects (see attestations)

regidor, town council member
(a loanword from Spanish)

king (a Nahuatlization of the loanword "rey," in Spanish)

pound, a measure; also Libra, a sign of the zodiac; actually, originally a loanword from Latin, although possibly similar in siixteenth-century Spanish; see Lori Boornazian Diel, The Codex Mexicanus: A Guide to Life in Late-Sixteenth-Century New Spain (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018), 173.

free
(a loanword from Spanish)

see 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), 226–227.