a unit for measuring length, a fathom; sometimes used in place of the indigenous measure quahuitl (stick); also the distance between the hands when the arms were extended (like a braza); a tlalquahuitl or quahuitl may also have been 2.5 varas (or so attested in Azcapotzalco in 1738)
James Lockhart, Nahuatl as Written: Lessons in Older Written Nahuatl, with Copious Examples and Texts (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Studies, 2001), 211.